pre-publication version of the paper completed in 2010, incorporating editorial

suggestions, to be published in: Howard Hotson, Vladimír Urbánek (eds.),

Apocalypticism, Millenarianism, and Prophecy: Eschatological Expectations
between East-Central and Western Europe, 1560-1670 (Series: Universal Reform:
Studies in Intellectual History, 1550-1700), Ashgate (2011)

‘Heliocantharus Borealis’: Alchemy, Polish Sarmatism and

the Fourth Northern Monarchy in the Prophetic Vision of
Michael Sendivogius

Rafał T. Prinke

Uncovering millenarian ideas in alchemical texts is not easy. The litterati of the
Baroque period became obsessed with linguistic games, playing with anagrams and
hiding secret messages in their treatises. Along with other forms of contemporary
literary fashion, these pursuits found their way into a new type of alchemical text
which was no longer based on Decknamen, or code names for various substances and
processes,1 but one that used literary constructs intended to stimulate intellectual
processes in the reader to produce results which were neither intended nor expected
by the author. Perhaps the pinnacle in the design on a grand scale of such schemes
was achieved by Michael Maier in Atalanta fugiens, a book of emblems, poetry,
prose, and music which was ‘to be looked at, read, meditated, understood, weighed,
sung and listened to, not without a certain pleasure’.2 In another of his major works,

1 Julius Ruska and Eilhard Wiedemann, ‘Alchemistische Decknamen‘, Sitzungsberichte der

physikalisch-medicinischen Societät zu Erlanger, 56-57 (1924–25), pp. 17–36; William R. Newman,
‘Decknamen or “Pseudochemical Language”? Eirenaeus Philalethes and Carl Jung’, Revue d’histoire
des sciences, 49 (1996), pp. 159–88.
2 From the title page of Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (Oppenheim, 1618), ‘non absque singulari

jucunditate videnta, legenda, meditanda, intelligenda, dijudicanda, canenda & audienda’, trans. and
ed. Joscelyn Godwin, Atalanta fugiens (1617): An Edition of the Emblems, Fugues and Epigrams
(Tysoe, 1987). See also H.M. de Jong, Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens: Sources of an Alchemical
Book of Emblems (Leiden, 1969); Hereward Tilton, The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and
Rosicrucianism in the Work of Count Michael Maier (1569–1622) (Berlin, 2003); Ivo Purš and Jakub
1
Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum (1617), Maier presented the evolution
of alchemy as a succession of twelve adepts from twelve nations, starting with
Hermes Trismegistos, the ancient Egyptian, and closing with the contemporary
Anonymus Sarmata. While eleven are known by their names,3 the last one’s identity
was deliberately hidden by the author. He did leave some hints, however, for the
reader to solve the riddle.
The most obvious of those clues is the adept’s name itself. The Renaissance
revival of classical learning made it fashionable to use names of Roman provinces as
designators of the area of origin – for example, Rheticus or Pannonius. Countries
which lay outside the Roman Empire adopted names of ancient tribes and thus
Poland became known as Sarmatia when Mathias of Miechów (1457–1523) published
his Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis, Asiana et Europiana (1517), the first description
of Polish territories, which had many editions and was translated into several
languages. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the twelfth adept of Maier was
intended to represent a Pole.
The last section of the book starts with an emblematic engraving displaying a
man in his forties, dressed like a Polish nobleman, accompanied by the figure of
Saturn with a wooden leg, leaning on a crutch and watering trees which bear solar
and lunar fruits. The opening sentence makes it clear that no details about this
person would be given as everyone should be able to work out his identity:

We do not need to dwell on the life, deeds and writings of the Anonymous
Sarmata (about whom someone gave testimony that it was Heliocantharus
Borealis, and that he saw with his own eyes a projection of his tincture of
extraordinary power on various metals and their transmutation into the purest

Hlaváček, ed. and trans., Atalanta fugiens. Prchající Atalanta neboli Nové chymické emblémy
vyjadřující tajemství přírody (Prague, 2006).
3 The existence of the eleventh adept, Melchior Cibinensis Ungarus, nominal author of the alchemical

mass, is still debated but to Maier and his contemporaries he was obviously a real person. See Cristina
Neagu, ‘The Processus sub forma missae: Christian Alchemy, Identity and Identification’, Archaeus, 4
(2000), pp. 105–17; Gábor Farkas Kiss, Benedek Láng and Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu, ‘The Alchemical
Mass of Nicolaus Melchior Cibinensis: Text, Identity and Speculations’, Ambix, 53 (2006), pp. 143–59;
Benedek Láng, Unlocked Books. Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central
Europe (University Park, PA, 2008), pp. 144–6 and pp. 158–61; Ivo Purš and Jakub Hlaváček, eds,
Alchymická mše. Sborník textů ke vztahům alchymie a křesťanství (Prague, 2008).
2
 gold) because both he himself and his treatises are accessible, seen by many
with both their minds and their eyes.4

A gloss in the margin provides additional hints: the initials ‘M. S.’ and ‘Os. Cr.’,
plus ‘Heliocantharus Borealis a Crollio dictus’. It is not difficult to guess that ‘Crollio’
and ‘Os. Cr.’ stand for the renowned Paracelsian physician Oswald Croll (c.1560–
1608), author of the celebrated Basilica chymica (1609) which formed a systematic
exposition of Paracelsian medicine.5 Near the end of the first section (Praefatio
admonitoria), Croll says it is his duty to preserve the memory of an event to which he
was an eye witness and that he will always be thankful to God for granting him such a
privilege. The miraculous event was the healing with just one drop of an elixir of a
dying man and it was performed by ‘a greatly learned man Heliocantharus Borealis,
now already resting in Christ’. His name and identity is not divulged but is encoded
ingeniously in the text: some letters in the passage are capitalised and spell out the
name ‘Michael Sendivoius’.6 The initials match those in Maier’s gloss and it is indeed
the name of a Polish alchemist, Michał Sędziwój, better known, under the latinised
form of his name, as Sendivogius.7 Croll spelt it without the ‘g’, the way it was
pronounced in Czech (Sendivoj).8

4 Maier, Symbola aureae mensae (Frankfurt, 1617), p. 555: ‘Anonymi Sarmatae, (cui quidam hoc
testimonium perhibet, quod sit Heliocantharus Borealis, cuius tincturae admirabilem potentiam in
diversa metalla proiectae ipse viderit suis oculis, eorumq; in aurum optimum conversionem) aut vitam
& mores, aut scripta velle evolvere, cum & ipse & eius tractatus habeantur & tam mente quam oculis a
plurimis observentur, nobis hic non fore necessarium arbitramur’.
5 Wilhelm Ganzenmüller, ‘Das chemische Laboratorium der Universität Marburg im Jahre 1615’, in

idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Technologie und der Alchemie (Weinheim, 1956), pp. 314–22;
Bruce T. Moran, The Alchemical World of the German Court. Occult Philosophy and Chemical
Medicine in the Circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1632) (Stuttgart, 1991); idem, Chemical Pharmacy
Enters the University: Johannes Hartmann and the Didactic Care of Chymiatria in the Early
Seventeenth Century (Madison, 1991). Croll’s book appeared in many editions and translations during
the seventeenth century; for a comprehensive list see Oswald Crollius, De signaturis internis rerum.
Die lateinische Editio princeps (1609) und die deutsche Erstübersetzung (1623), ed. Wilhelm
Kühlmann and Joachim Telle (Stuttgart 1996), pp. 254−74. It was even translated into Arabic, see
Emilie Savage−Smith, ‘Drug therapy of eye diseases in seventeenth−century Islamic medicine. The
influence of the “new chemistry” of the Paracelsians’, Pharmacy in History, 29 (1987), pp. 3−28.
6 Oswald Croll, Basilica chymica (Frankfurt, 1609), Praefatio admonitoria, p. 94: ‘apud Magnum

aliquem, cui in aeternum bene sIt, & Cumprimis egregium HeliocAntharum borEaLem, nunc in
Christo quiescentem: CujuSmodi lENtis DenIque consueVerunt latitare tempOrum currIcUliS’.
7 For Sendivogius, see especially Włodzimierz Hubicki, ‘The True Life of Michael Sendivogius’, in Actes

du XI Congres international d’histoire des sciences, vol. 4 (Warsaw, 1965), pp. 31–35; Roman Bugaj,
Michał Sędziwój (1566–1636). Życie i pisma (Wroclaw, 1968); Zbigniew Szydło, Water Which Does
Not Wet Hands. The Alchemy of Michael Sendivogius (Warsaw, 1994); Rafał T. Prinke, ‘Michael
Sendivogius and Christian Rosenkreutz. The unexpected possibilities’, The Hermetic Journal (1990),
pp. 72-98; idem, ‘The twelfth adept. Michael Sendivogius in Rudolphine Prague’, in Ralph White, ed.,
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment revisited (Hudson, NY, 1999), pp. 141–92; idem, ‘Beyond patronage:
Michael Sendivogius and the meanings of success in alchemy’, in Miguel López Pérez, Didier Kahn and
3
 Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636) was the author of two alchemical treatises, De
lapide philosophorum tractatus duodecim (1604) and Tractatus de sulphure, altero
naturae principio (1616), and of a satirical Dialogus Mercurii, alchymistae et
Naturae (1607), all of which were subsequently published together as Novum lumen
chemicum. These tracts were extremely influential and by the end of the eighteenth
century had about seventy editions (including translations into several languages),
the highest number of any early modern alchemical text. Because of the success of his
writings and because Sendivogius was believed by his contemporaries to be ‘a true
possessor of the Philosopher’s Stone’, many tales and much gossip were circulated
about him, even during his lifetime, and in the second half of the seventeenth century
these gave rise to the ‘official legend’ which represented Sendivogius as an impostor
who helped a Scottish alchemist, Alexander Seton, escape from prison in Dresden
and after his death married this man’s widow and published his treatises under his
own name. While this story is still circulated even in scholarly publications,9 it can be
shown to have been based on incorrect reminiscences of Sendivogius’s relationship in
Prague with the English alchemist Edward Kelley, while Alexander Seton’s name was
incorporated into it much later. Early elements of the story may have been inspired

Mar Rey Bueno, eds, Chymia: Science and nature in medieval and early modern Europe (Newcastle
upon Tyne, 2010), pp. 175–231; idem, ‘Nolite de me inquirere (Nechtyějte se po mniě ptatj): Michael
Sendivogius (1566–1636)’, in Ivo Purš and Vladimír Karpenko, eds, Alchymie a Rudolf II. Hledání
tajemství přírody ve střední Evropě v 16. a 17. století (Prague, 2011), pp. 317–33. For his alchemical
theories see also William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire. The Lives of George Starkey, An American
Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution, 2nd edn (Chicago, 2003); Włodzimierz Hubicki, ‘Michael
Sendivogius’s Theory, its Origin and Significance in the History of Chemistry’, in Proceedings of the
10th International Congress of the History of Science (Ithaca, 1962) (Paris, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 829–33;
Zbigniew Szydło, ‘The Alchemy of Michael Sendivogius His Central Nitre Theory’, Ambix, 40 (1993),
pp. 129–46; idem, ‘The Influence of the Central Nitre Theory of Michael Sendivogius on the Chemical
Philosophy of the 17th Century’, Ambix, 43 ( 1996), pp. 80–97; Paulo Alves Porto, ‘Michael
Sendivogius on Nitre and the Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone’, Ambix, 48 (2001), pp. 1–16;
Didier Kahn, ‘Le Tractatus de sulphure de Michael Sendivogius (1616), une alchimie entre philosophie
naturelle et mystique’, in Claude Thomasset. ed., L’écriture du texte scientifique au Moyen Age (Paris,
2006), pp. 193–221.
8 The encoding was retained in all subsequent Latin editions, while in the English translation this

fragment is left in the original with a note from the translator ‘which I forbear to English’: Philosophy
Reformed & Improved in Four Profound Tractates. The I. Discovering the Great and Deep Mysteries
of Nature: By that Learned Chymist & Physitian Osw: Crollius. The other III. Discovering the
Wonderfull Mysteries of the Creation, by Paracelsus: being His Philosophy to the Athenians. Both
made English by H. Pinnell, for the increase of Learning and true Knowledge (London, 1657), p. 196.
See also: Rafał T. Prinke, ‘Milczenie alchemików. Tożsamość Michała Sędziwoja zakodowana w tekście
Basilica chymica Oswalda Crolla’, Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej, 28 (2007), pp. 217–41.
9 For example, see Andrew Weeks, Boehme: an intellectual biography of the seventeenth-century

philosopher and mystic (New York, 1991), pp. 67 and 234; Marsha Keith Schuchard, Restoring the
temple of vision: cabalistic freemasonry and Stuart culture (Leiden, 2002), pp. 281–2, esp. note 147;
Antoni Krawczyk, ‘The British in Poland in the Seventeenth Century’, The Seventeenth Century, 17
(2002), pp. 254–72, specifically p. 264; Sally Metzler, ‘Artists, Alchemists and Mannerists in Courtly
Prague’, in Jacob Wamberg, ed., Art & Alchemy (Njalsgade, 2006), pp. 129–48.
4
by Sendivogius himself, as he often stressed that his tincture (a powder or oil for
transmuting base metals into gold or silver) had not been made by himself, but that
he had received it from his praeceptorfrom Egypt. One reason for doing this may
have been the obvious fear that powerful people or rival alchemists might try to make
him reveal the secret by force and torture – as indeed happened at least once.10
Another probable reason was the fact that although he pretended to be a Polish
nobleman, he was not actually born one but had skilfully arranged the confirmation
of his nobility by the Polish authorities (including the king himself).11
Although Michael Sendivogius had an extraordinary career, little is known
about his early life before 1590, the year in which he entered the University of
Leipzig. It is almost certain that he spent his childhood and youth in Cracow. He is
said to have travelled extensively all over Europe, from Muscovy and Sweden to
Portugal and England, and then to have studied at several universities.12 In 1593 or
1594 Sendivogius married into a family of Franconian nobility, taking the wealthy
widow Veronika Stiebar von Buttenheim as his wife, and he started calling himself
‘baron of Skorsko’. In 1594 he also became a courtier of Emperor Rudolf II, ‘serving
with three horses’,13 and in 1598 he was made Rudolf’s counsellor , a position which
he retained, often being called by later authors ‘trium imperatorum consiliarius’.14
From 1600 until his death he also held the title of royal secretary to Zygmunt

10 By the alchemist Hans Heinrich von Mühlenfels, possibly in collusion with Frederick I, Duke of

Württemberg. Source materials on this affair were published in Christoph Gottlieb von Murr,
Litterarische Machrichten zu der Geschichte des sogennanten Goldmachens (Leipzig, 1805), pp. 54–
79. See also Bugaj, Michał Sędziwój, pp. 116–23; Prinke, ‘Michael Sendivogius and Christian
Rosenkreutz’, p. 83; idem., ‘Beyond Patronage’, pp. 204–05.
11 Rafał T. Prinke, ‘Michał Sędziwój – pochodzenie, rodzina, herb’, Gens. Kwartalnik Towarzystwa

Genealogiczno-Heraldycznego w Poznaniu, 3, no. 2 (1992), pp. 33–49; idem., ‘Beyond patronage’, pp.
193–7; idem., ‘Veronika Stiebarin, the wife of Michael Sendivogius’, in Jiří Hanzal and Ondřej Šefčík,
eds, Sršatý Prajz. Erich Šefčík (1945–2004). Sborník k nedožitým 65. narozeninám historika a
archiváře (Prague, 2010), pp. 151–62; idem., ‘Nolite de me inquirere’, pp. 317–33; idem., ‘Michał
Sędziwój – początki kariery’, Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, 58, 1 (2012), pp. 89–129.
12 The only source that lists them all is the preface to Jiří Carolides of Karlsperk, Praecepta

institutionis generosae indolis (Prague, 1598), dedicated to the elder son of Sendivogius – Christoph
Michael. The imperial poet named seven universities (Academias florentissimas; Cantabrigiensem;
Ingolstadiensem; Lipsensem; Altorphinam; Francofurdiensem; Rostochiensem; Vitebergensem adijt),
but matriculation records of only two of them – Leipzig and Altdorf – contain entries for Sendivogius.
One that was not included by Carolides but whose records confirm that Sendivogious studied there
was Vienna. The most intriguing is Cambridge, listed first, as there were practically no students from
Poland or Bohemia at the university before the nineteenth century (with a few interesting exceptions
such as Simon Hájek, the eldest son of the renowned Tadeáš Hájek, who received his B.A. in 1581, and
Jan Jonston, the famous natural historian born in Poland of a Scottish father, who studied at
Cambridge in 1623–24 and in 1629).
13 Jaroslava Hausenblasová, ed., Der Hof Kaiser Rudolfs II. Eine Editition der Hofstaatsverzeichnisse

1576–1612 (Prague, 2002), pp. 276–7.

14 For example on an undated (c.1720) bookplate of Frederic Roth-Scholtz with an imaginative portrait

of Sendivogius based on that in Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae (author’s collection).
5
(Sigismund) III, king of Poland, and served both monarchs by communicating
between them, as well as conducting diplomatic missions, about which little is
known.15. Spending forty-two years in the service of the Holy Roman Emperors and
not significantly less as the royal secretary of Poland – the largest European kingdom
– simultaneously was an impressive feat, even for an alchemical adept.
Sendivogius lived in Prague from 1594 until 1604 before travelling to the court
of Friedrich I of Württemberg in Stuttgart, a move which ended in the disastrous
Mühlenfels affair.16 On returning to Poland he stayed at Krzepice, in the castle of
Mikołaj Wolski of Podhajce (1553–1630), one of the most influential magnates in
Poland, whom he helped with the development of the area’s metallurgical industry. In
1614 he bought a cottage (curia) with a garden just outside the city walls of Cracow,
next to St Anne’s Gate on the other side of which was (and is still) the Collegium
Maius of the Jagiellonian University. He lived there until 1625 when he sold it,
accepted the position of counsellor to Emperor Ferdinand II and moved back to
Prague in 1626. In 1630, in return for his services, Sendivogius received the land
estate of Kravaře and Kouty (near Opava) with a small castle and a house in Olomouc.
He died in the summer of 1636.
The strange name of ‘Heliocantharus Borealis’, which Oswald Croll gave to
Sendivogius in his Basilica chymica, can be translated as ‘Northern Scarab’. In
Renaissance and Baroque Europe the symbolic meaning of the scarab was associated
chiefly with an Aesop fable in which it represents the power of an apparently helpless
insect who, through industry and patience, manages to defeat an eagle and,
eventually, Zeus himself. It may have been used as an allusion to the influence
Sendivogius had on monarchs and princes, or to his determination and success in the
pursuit of a career. At the time the Greek term for the beetle was barely used beyond
classical texts, but it was certainly known. Some forty years later Athanasius Kircher
wrote about ‘Hieroglyphicus ille Heliocantharus, seu Scarabaeus’, which he believed
the ancient Egyptians carved in magnetic rock.17 If the story had been in circulation

15 Anna Pawlaczyk and Rafał T. Prinke, ‘Dwa listy Zygmunta III Wazy do cesarza Rudolfa II w sprawie

alchemika Michała Sędziwoja’, Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej, 27 (2005), pp. 127–34.

16 The incident was widely publicised and commented upon in alchemical circles, referred to in print by

Andreas Libavius, Syntagmatis arcanorum chymicorum tomus secundus (Frankfurt, 1613), p. 437,
and by Michel Potier, Veredarius Hermetico-Philosophicus laetum et inauditum nuncium adferens
(Frankfurt, 1622), pp. 250–51.
17 Athanasius Kircher, Magnes sive de arte magnetica (Cologne, 1643), p. 20.

6
earlier, it might have been a hidden reference to Sendivogius’s teachings on magnetic
forces, which were central to his alchemical theory.
Most interestingly, however, the word in its Greek form was used by John Dee
in his celebrated Monas hieroglyphica (1564), in which he interpreted Aesop’s fable
as an alchemical allegory.18 Although writing in Latin and using ‘scarabeus’ in other
places as well, there is one phrase in which he says: ‘All the same I should advise
those who are vexed by the cruelty of that bird to learn a very useful art from those
Heliocantharis (which thus at certain periods live in hiding)’.19 Dee’s treatise was
studied and interpreted by numerous alchemists including Gerhard Dorn, Joseph
Duchesne (Quercetanus) and Heinrich Khunrath,20 and the scarab fable in particular
was considered by Andreas Libavius in his Rerum chymicarum of 1595, where he
also used the form Heliocantharis in allusion to their life in hiding.21 Heinrich
Khunrath (1560–1605), who met the English magus personally in 1589, used many
ideas drawn from Dee in his Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Hamburg, 1595;
Hanau 1609) but, interestingly, when he used a scarab metaphor it carried quite the
opposite meaning, namely that of a fraudulent alchemist.22 The German word
‘Goldkefer’ used by Khunrath is specifically identified as ‘Cantharis’ and different
from ‘Scarabaeus’ in a 1555 polyglot dictionary,23 but it is clear from the context that
it was not Croll’s intention to call Sendivogius a fraud.24
Peter Forshaw has also found references to Dee’s book in two major works by
Oswald Croll, most importantly in Basilica chymica, where he mentions ‘planets of

18 John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564), pp. 17v–18r.

19 C.H. Josten, ‘A translation of John Dee’s “Monas hieroglyphica” (Antwerp, 1564), with an
introduction and annotations,’ Ambix, 12 (1964), pp. 177–9: ‘Illis tamen consulerem, qui istius avis
vexantur crudelitate, ab ipsis Heliocantharis (qui ita certis temporum curriculis latitando vivunt)
utilissimam artem discere.’ In the translation, for the sake of argument, I have changed Josten’s ‘sun-
beetles’ to ‘Heliocantharis’. The other English translation, Hieroglyphic Monad, trans. J.W. Hamilton-
Jones (London, 1947), renders this fragment thus: ‘Therefore, I counsel those who are ill-treated by
the cruelty of this bird, that they learn the very useful art from these solar insects (Heliocantharis) who
live concealed and hidden for very long periods of time.’
20 Peter J. Forshaw, ‘The early alchemical reception of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica’, Ambix, 52

(2005), pp. 247–69.

21 Bruce T. Moran, ‘The Less Well-known Libavius: Spirits, Powers, and Metaphors in the Practice of

Knowing Nature’, in Lawrence Principe, ed., Chymists and chymistry: studies in the history of
alchemy and early modern chemistry (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007), pp. 13–24, specifically pp. 15–16;
Peter Forshaw, ‘The early alchemical reception’, p. 254, with a long quotation from the original in
footnote.
22 See Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and authority in the Holy Roman Empire, (Chicago, 2007), p. 69.
23 Hadrian Junius, Nomenclator omnium rerum (Augsburg, 1555), p. 41 of the 1581 edition.
24 The source of Khunrath’s usage is most probably a facetious satirical poem by Georg Rollenhagen

(1542–1609) entitled ‘Wie ein alchymistischer goldkefer sich bei Reiniken einwirbt und der
philosophen stein machen leret’ and forming a part of his very popular mock-heroic Froschmeuseler,
first published in 1595.
7
inferior Astronomy’ with a reference to Monas hieroglyphica. The concept of
astronomia inferior is the topic of Theorem XVIII, as it is when Dee writes of the
Heliocantharis, and Croll refers to it again a few pages later, in the passage where the
name of Heliocantharus Borealis is encoded, when describing the power of his
elixir.25 It certainly looks like another hidden clue which should be picked up by a
knowledgeable and scrupulous reader and leave no doubt as to what Croll had in
mind when inventing (or perhaps only reusing) that nickname. He implied that the
person in question was an adept who preferred to remain unknown and live in hiding,
like Dee’s Heliocantharis. This is, actually, what Sendivogius himself wrote in De
lapide philosophorum of 1604: ‘Believe me, if I were not a man of that rank and
condition as I am, nothing would be more pleasant to me than a solitary life, or with
Diogenes to lie hid under a Tub.’26
The second element of the name Heliocantharus Borealis is much easier to
unravel. ‘Borealis’ means ‘Northern’ and the word was used by Sendivogius himself in
Tractatus de sulphure of 1616, in a short prophetic fragment of the preface:27

De sulphure (1616, pp. A4 r◦–v◦; 1749, Of sulphur (1674, pp. 80–1)

pp. 603–04)

Iam etiam illa tempora adveniunt, in
quibus arcana multa naturae revelabuntur: Iam
illa Monarchia quarta Borealis incipere habet:
Iam tempora appropinquant; mater scientiarum
veniet; majora elucidabuntur quam in his tribus
praeteritis Monarchiis factum est. Quoniam hanc
Monarchiam (ut veteres divinarunt) plantabit
Deus per unum ex Principibus omnibus
Now those times are coming, in which
many Secrets of Nature shall be revealed. Now
that fourth Monarchy of the North is about to
begin: Now the times are at hand; the Mother of
Sciences will come: greater things shall be
discovered than hath been done in these three
last past Monarchies. Because this monarchy (as
the Ancients have foretold) God will plant by one

25 Croll, Basilica, Praefatio, p. 94: ‘varias & multiplices Inferioris Astronomiae metamorphoses’.
26 Michael Sendivogius, A New Light of Alchymy (London, 1674), p. 51. This ‘Preface to the
philosophical aenigma, or ridle’ was not included in the 1650 English edition. The original Latin is:
‘Credite mihi si non essem ejusmodi status ac conditionis homo sicut sum, nil mihi solitaria vita foret
jucundius, vel cum Diogene sub dolio delitescere.’ (1749 edition, p. 585; the same text as the original
1604 Prague edition but with expanded abbreviations.) Compare the nineteenth-century English
translation published by Arthur Edward Waite in The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged
(London, 1893), vol. 2, p. 111.
27 The Latin text is from the 1749 edition in Musaeum hermeticum because it has expanded

contractions of which there are many in the first 1616 edition. Otherwise the text is identical, save for
minor differences in punctuation and insertion of the reference to John 10:16 which was absent in the
first edition. Again, the English translation is from the 1674 edition because the 1650 version did not
have this preface.
8
virtutibus ditatum, quem fortasse nobis jam
tempora produxerunt. Habemus enim in hac
parte boreali Principem Sapientissimum ac
bellicosissimum, quem nullus Monarcharum
victoriis superat, humanitate ac pietate nullus
excellit. In hac Monarchia Boreali Deus omnium
conditor rerum majora arcana sine dubio in
natura elucidabit quam illis temporibus ubi aut
Paganorum aut Tyrannorum Principum sedes
fuit. Sed has Monarchias Philosophi non
secundum potentiores, sed secundum Cardines
mundi numerant: Inprimis Orientalem; postea
Meridionalem; jam vero Occidentalem habent; &
ultimam Septentrionalem in hac parte Boreali
expectant: de quibus in Harmonia dabitur. In hac
Septentrionali attractiva polari Monarchia (ut
Psalmista ait) Misericordia & veritas obviabunt
sibi; pax & justitia osculabuntur; Veritas de terra
orientur, & Justitia de coelo prospiciet. Unum
ovile, & unus pastor; (Ioh. 10. 16.) Scientiae
multae sine invidia: quod & ego cum desiderio
expecto.
of his Princes, being enriched with all manner of
Virtues, whom haply [=happy] times have
already brought forth. For we have in this
Northern part a most wise Prince, and most
warlike, whom none of the Monarchs doth go
beyond in Victories, or excel in Humanity and
Piety. In this Northern Monarchy God the maker
of all things will, without doubt, bring to light
greater Secrets in Nature than in those times,
when Pagan and Tyrant Princes reigned. But the
Philosophers reckon these Monarchies not
according to the powerfulness of them, but
according to the corners of the world: the first
was Eastern, the next Southern; this which they
now possess is Western; the last which they
expect in this Northern part is Northern: but of
these further in my Book of Harmony. In this
Northern Monarchy, where the attractive Pole is
(as the Psalmist speaks) Mercy and Truth are met
together; Peace and Justice shall kiss each other:
Truth shall rise out of the earth, and Justice shall
look from Heaven. One Sheepfold and one
Shepherd. Many Arts without Envy: All which I
do earnestly expect.

The idea of the periodisation of history into four monarchies was derived from
the Book of Daniel and was very much a factor in medieval and later discourses, both
historical and prophetic, and was usually interpreted as a succession of the
Babylonian, Persian, Greek (Macedonian) and Roman empires.28 The mainstream
consensus maintained that the fourth, or Roman, empire still continued as the Holy
Roman Empire of the German Nation on one hand, and the Papal ecclesiastical
jurisdiction over the whole of Europe and much of the Americas on the other. The
claim of Michael Sendivogius that it was really the third kingdom, while the
appearance of the fourth should be expected in the imminent future, seems to have

28Such an interpretation had been formulated already by St Jerome in his commentary on the Book of
Daniel. For a summary of later developments, see John H. Walton, ‘The Four Kingdoms Of Daniel’,
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 29:1 (1986), pp. 25–36; Katharina Bracht and David S.
Du Toit, eds, Die Geschichte der Daniel-Auslegung in Judentum, Christentum und Islam: Studien zur
Kommentierung des Danielbuches in Literatur und Kunst (Berlin, 2007).
9
been his own idea, but it was one which found followers nevertheless among
contemporary and subsequent millenarians.
The other theme, that of the Northern Monarchy, can be traced back to the
pseudo-Paracelsian prophecy of the Northern Lion which appeared around 1600,
certainly before 1605, although it was first printed only in 1619 (or 1622). It was a
chiliastic interpretation of the vision from the fourth Book of Ezra, predicting the
imminent coming of the Midnight Lion who will defeat the Eagle (the Habsburgs)
and proclaim a new world order, spreading his rule over the whole of Europe and
parts of Africa and Asia.29 It played an important role in political propaganda in later
years but before 1616 was known only to a handful of Rosicrucian enthusiasts and
conspirators. Thus, Sendivogius must have read it in manuscript some time before
1608 (the terminus ante quem for Croll’s coining the name ‘Heliocantharus
Borealis’). His close relationship with Croll in 1598 and 1599 is well documented;
they both were members of the alchemical circle of Ludvík Korálek of Těšín, a
wealthy merchant in Prague, and both treated him (unsuccessfully) when he fell ill
and eventually died in 1599.30 The year 1598 is suggested by Susanna Åkerman as
significant for the prophecy, so it may have been in circulation already by that time.31
Sendivogius left Prague in late 1604 or early 1605, and therefore he must have
formulated his doctrine of the Northern Monarchy between 1598 and 1604.
What Sendivogius proposes in his chronological scheme is effectively a
reinterpretation and, indeed, a ‘harmonisation’ of both earlier prophetic concepts.
When the succession of epoch-making monarchies is seen as coinciding with the
cardinal directions, commencing with the East as the oldest known empire, it is quite
logical to look to the North to complete the cycle. And because there had been no
great monarchy there, it would succeed the one in the West. But instead of the
obvious choice of Sweden as the place where it would soon be born, he pointed
elsewhere, as suggested by the choice of names for the North in his text.

29 Johan Nordström, ‘Lejonet från Norden’, Samlaren. Tidskrift för Svensk litteraturhistorisk
Forskning, N.F., 15 (1934), p. 1-66; Susanna Åkerman, ‘The Rosicrucian context of the Lion of the
North’, in eadem, Rose Cross over the Baltic. The spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe
(Leiden, 1998), pp. 125–72; Carlos Gilly, ‘The “Midnight Lion”, the “Eagle” and the “Antichrist”:
Political, religious and chiliastic propaganda in the pamphlets, illustrated broadsheets and ballads of
the Thirty Years War’, Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 80 (2000), pp. 46–77.
30 Prinke, ‘Beyond Patronage’, p. 178; idem, ‘Nolite de me inquirere’, pp. 322–5. Korálek’s family

accused Sendivogius of causing his death and Croll testified at court defending him.
31 Åkerman, Rose Cross, p. 121.

10
 Names of directions or winds found on medieval and early modern maps are far
from consistent but while Septentrio was quite standard for the northern wind,
Boreas or Aquilo (sometimes treated as identical, sometimes as different) were
typically used for those of a north-eastern or north-north-eastern direction.32 So
when Sendivogius writes that the last of the monarchies is ‘Septentrionalem in hac
parte Boreali expectant’, he clearly distinguishes the two terms, stating that the
Northern Monarchy should be expected in the north-eastern part of Europe. He
continues that ‘we have in this Northern [Borealis] part a most wise Prince, and most
warlike, whom none of the Monarchs doth go beyond in Victories’, implying that this
prince will begin the new World Empire in the north-eastern area, by which he clearly
means the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The first person plural ‘habemus’ may
of course be used in a general sense, but this may also be related to his Polish
nationality. Earlier researchers who analysed this passage, Roman Bugaj in 1968 and
Didier Kahn in 2006, also arrived at the same conclusion. They differed, however, on
the identity of the ‘princeps’: Kahn, after considering several possible candidates,
suggested it must have been Zygmunt III, the then ruling king of Poland,33 while
Bugaj believed it was his son, later king Władysław IV.34 The latter was indeed
perceived in Poland as the future monarch of half of Europe and had genuine chances
to become this had his father been a more skilful diplomat. In 1599, as a boy of four,
he was elected the King of Sweden by the Riksdag and used the title until his death,
even though he never managed to take the throne (his father did not agree that he
should convert to Lutheranism, which was the formal requirement). In 1610 he was
elected Grand Duke (Tsar) of Muscovy by the boyars and in 1612 was on his way to
the coronation when the uprising in Moscow prevented it. Nevertheless, Władysław
used the title until 1634 (two years after he became the King of Poland and Grand
Duke of Lithuania following his father’s death). So by the time of the publication of
Sendivogius’s millenarian prophecy, Prince Władysław of Poland had already been a
titular monarch of Sweden and Russia, and, being popular among Polish nobility, was
the undisputed candidate for the elective throne of Poland. In 1619, he was also

32 See for example: Ptolemy's world map (1482), British Library,

http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/mappinghist/large2296.html; Hugh Plommer, Vitruvius and

Later Roman Building Manuals (Cambridge, 1973), p. 42 (quoting Vitruvius, ‘De ventis: inter
septentrionem et subsolanum aquilonem’); Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture (Illustrated
Edition) (Teddington, 2008), chapter entitled ’The Directions of the Streets; With Remarks of the
Winds’, pp. 29–34, with diagrams on pp. 33 and 34.
33 Kahn, ‘Le Tractatus’, p. 202.
34 Bugaj, Michał Sędziwój, p. 248.

11
offered the joined crown of Bohemia and Silesia by representatives of these states35
and later, in 1628, planned a marriage with a daughter of Frederick V, the Winter
King of Bohemia.36 In the 1630’s France even offered him the imperial crown were he
to join the anti-Hapsburg league – although it was unrealistic at the time, it shows
how highly Władysław was regarded throughout Europe.37 Polish political
propagandists obviously used this positive attitude towards Prince Władysław and
represented him as a most excellent future monarch in numerous ephemeral prints,
which typically included his engraved portrait or allegorical images.38
An indirect connection between Prince Władysław and the idea of the
‘Monarchia Borealis’ can be found in the book De officio principis christiani written
by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, S.J. (1542–1621), one of the leading spirits of the
Counter-Reformation. This was published in 1619 in several places at the same time
(Rome, Lyon, Antwerp and Cologne) and was dedicated to ‘Serenissimo principi
Wladislao Sigismundi III. Poloniae & Sueciae Regis filio’. In the dedicatory epistle
the author refers to his excellent virtues, just as Sendivogius had, and then explains
that Divine Providence predestined him to rule over not one kingdom but many at the
same time, as an anticipated king of Poland, hereditary king of Sweden, and elected
Grand Duke of Muscovy, a great empire which encompasses vast areas ‘a
Septentrione ad Orientem’.39 Although the terms here refer to Muscovy, they clearly
describe the future realm of Władysław to be the ‘Monarchia [...] Septentrionalis in
hac parte Boreali expectant’, as Sendivogius had put it three years earlier.
The reason Sendivogius included his prophecy in the preface to his alchemical
treatise is almost certainly the recent publication of the Rosicrucian manifestoes and
the excitement they invoked throughout Europe. The Fama Fraternitatis was
circulated in manuscript probably as early as 1610 and appeared in print in 1614, with

35 Władysław Czapliński, Władysław IV i jego czasy (Warsaw, 1971; 2nd edn 1976), p. 54; Leszek

Podhorodecki, Wazowie w Polsce (Warsaw, 1985), p. 152.

36 Podhorecki, Wazowie, p. 104; Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska, Dynastia Wazów w Polsce

(Warsaw, 2006).
37 Two important monographs on him are: Czapliński, Władysław, and Henryk Wisner, Władysław IV

Waza (Wroclaw, 1995).

38 Juliusz A. Chrościcki, Sztuka i polityka. Funkcje propagandowe sztuki w epoce Wazów 1587–1668

(Warsaw, 1983).
39 Roberto Bellarmino, De officio principis christiani libri tres (Lyon, 1619), fol. *3r–*3v: ‘Neque id

mirum nobis videri debet: cum Te providentia Dei non ad Regnum unum gubernandum, sed ad multa
simul, & maxima primum acquirenda, deinde administranda delegisse, & vocasse videatur. Te enim
Poloniae Regnum expectat amplissimum. Tuum est haereditario iure Regnum Sueciae, quod iniuste
ereptum, Deus iustus Iudex, & Princeps Regnum terrae, Tibi iustissimo haeredi tempore suo restituet.
Tibi magnus Moscoviae Ducatus, qui instar maximi Imperii a Septentrione ad Orientem usque per
vastissimas regiones protenditur, electionis iure debetur.’
12
the Confessio Fraternitatis following in 1615.40 Sendivogius, then in Cracow, may
have received it through any one of his numerous contacts in Bohemia or Germany,
or from visitors coming to the Jagiellonian University, beside which he was living. A
probable candidate is Benedictus Figulus, an itinerant alchemist, collector and dealer
of manuscripts, who was a friend of Adam Haslmayr, the author of the first reply to
the Fama. Figulus published several collections of alchemical texts, in one of which
he included a version of Sendivogius’s Dialogus.41 Although it was published in 1608,
the preface is dated 1607, the same year in which the official first edition was
published. Thus he probably acquired an earlier version of it in manuscript and must
have had access, therefore, to someone close to Sendivogius or to the Polish alchemist
himself.
The apparent hasty insertion of his prophecy at the end of the completed
preface (he gives his closing advice to the reader immediately before) and the promise
to discuss it in more detail in his forthcoming Harmonia suggests that the immediate
reason for doing this was a hasty reaction to something, almost certainly the
publication of Secretoris philosophiae consideratio brevis by a certain Philippo a
Gabella (probably either Johannes Rhenanus or Raphael Egli42) together with the
first edition of the Confessio in 1615, as a kind of introduction to it. The text contains
long passages rewritten from Sendivogius’s De lapide philosophorum and from John
Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica (without references), thus suggesting that they were
patrons of the Rosicrucian Fraternity.43 It seems Sendivogius chose to distance
himself from any connection, presenting a short version of his vision of the coming
changes so that his name should not be associated with the Rosicrucians.

40 Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Englightenment (London, 1972) puts forward controversial
theses and, although widely criticised, is still worth reading; Carlos Gilly, Adam Haselmayer: Der
erste Verkiinder der Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer (Amsterdam, 1994); idem, Cimelia
Rhodostaurotica. Die Rosenkreuzer im Spiegel der zwischen 1610 und 1660 entstandenen
Handschriften und Drucke, Hermes ser., 16, (Amsterdam, 1995).
41 Benedictus Figulus, ed., Paradisus aureolus hermeticus (Frankfurt, 1608), pp. 50–63; in the same

year he also published his own translation of the dialogue into German in another collection:
Thesaurinella Olympica (Frankfurt, 1608), pp. 93–107.
42 The former identification was suggested by Carlos Gilly (Adam Haslmayr, p. 150), the latter by

Bruce T. Moran (Alchemical World, pp. 98–101).

43 Prinke, ‘Michael Sendivogius and Christian Rosenkreutz’, pp. 84–85; idem, ‘The Twelfth Adept’, pp.

182–3 (my suggestion there that Sendivogius may have been the author of that text was certainly
premature). While Dee’s fragments were obvious to earlier researchers (Yates, Åkerman), Sendivogian
pieces were discovered by myself. For a detailed discussion of both see: N.H. Clulee, ‘Astronomia
inferior. Legacies of Johannes Trithemius and John Dee’ in Secrets of nature. Astrology and alchemy
in early modern Europe, ed. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp.
173–233.
13
 That vision was not a simple statement of nationalist sentiments but was based
firmly upon the current political situation as outlined above and influenced heavily by
the major cultural current known as Sarmatism, which began to dominate the
worldview and the whole way of life of Polish nobility. It had evolved by the end of the
sixteenth century from the debate on the political system in Poland, the major
participants of which were Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503–1572) with his De
Republica emendanda (Cracow, 1551), and Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–1566) with
several important publications in the 1560s. Both were political and social reformers
but while the first proposed radical changes, the latter praised the system of elective
monarchy and extreme democracy of ‘the noble nation’ as the best of all, in need of
only minor improvement.44 Orzechowski’s views became popular and were
augmented with a plethora of additional notions, legends and habits, now referred to
as the culture of Sarmatism.45 They included the belief that Polish nobility are
descendents of ancient Sarmatians and form a separate ethnic group from Polish
peasants, but also such diverse aspects of everyday life as the costumes of Polish
noblemen, funeral customs (including unique coffin portraits), attitude towards
death and dying, popularity of the Latin language which was often a surprise to
foreign visitors, or keeping for many generations a form of house chronicle called
silvae rerum which contained copies of letters, poems and notes on current events, or
fragments from books.46
Most importantly, however, Sarmatian ideology presented a deep conviction
that Poland has the ideal system of democracy, the aurea libertas as defined in 1573
when Henry of Valois became the first elective king of Poland. It guaranteed
extensive rights to all members of the nobility (which constituted about ten per cent
of the population, the highest percentage in Europe), such as legal rebellion against
the king if he violated their freedoms (rokosz) or annulment of any act of the
Parliament by just one vote against (liberum veto). The system was perceived as
much superior to the absolutist monarchies surrounding Poland. Sarmatians also
prided themselves in religious toleration which allowed people of various creeds

44 Lech Szczucki, ‘Aspekty myśli polskiej XVI wieku’, in idem, ed., Filozofia i myśl społeczna XVI
wieku (Warsaw, 1978), pp. 9–29, in particular pp. 16–21.
45 A useful guide to the ideas, notions and symbols of Sarmatism is to be found in Andrzej Borowski,

ed., Słownik sarmatyzmu. Idee, pojęcia, symbole (Cracow, 2001).

46 Joanna Partyka, ‘Szlachecka silva rerum jako źrodło do badań etnograficznych’, Etnografia Polska

32 (1988), pp. 74–77; Stanisław Roszak, Archiwa sarmackiej pamięci. Funkcje i znaczenie
rękopiśmiennych ksiąg silva rerum w kulturze Rzeczypospolitej XVIII wieku (Toruń, 2004).
14
(Jews, Tartar Moslems, Orthodox Christians, and protestants of various persuasions,
including the Polish Brethren or Socinians) to live relatively peacefully in the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, welcoming refugees from other countries in religious-
war stricken Europe (most notably large numbers of Scottish and Czech exiles).
Although in the later part of the seventeenth century the situation changed gradually
and the notion of Poland as antemurale christianitatis linked Sarmatian ideology
more closely with the Roman Catholic Church, at the beginning of the century the
Golden Freedom also embraced the freedom of religion, with Lutheranism and
Calvinism becoming quite popular among the nobility and patricians of major cities.
Sarmatism regarded Poland as an ideal state and if any changes were needed,
these were minor details. One of its expressions – in many ways extreme but also
grasping its essence therefore – was the book entitled Wywód iedynowłasnego
państwa świata (1633) by Wojciech Dębołęcki (c.1585–c.1646), a Franciscan priest
who in his youth was chaplain and historiographer to the Polish troops known as
Lisowczycy, feared across Europe for their cruelty.47 He set out to prove that Poland
was the oldest kingdom in the world, the Polish nation being the only successors to
Adam, Seth and Japheth, and that Adam and Eve spoke the Polish language in the
Garden of Eden. While modern historians often use it as a typical example of
primitive national megalomania,48 many of the ideas used by Dębołęcki were
prevalent in milder form among Polish nobility. One of his arguments that is
especially interesting for this present discussion is the word play (and speaking ten
languages he often indulged in amateur etymology) on the similarity of ‘Aquila’
(eagle, the heraldic arms of the Kingdom of Poland) and ‘Aquilo’ (the Latin name for
Boreas), identifying the ‘Rex Aquilonis’ from Daniel 11:40 with the king of Poland
who was destined to rule over the whole world from the time of Adam.49 Considering

47 Rembrant’s Polish Rider is believed to be a portrait one of them. See Henryk Wisner, Lisowczycy,
2nd edn (Warsaw, 2004).
48 Jan Stanisław Bystroń, Megalomania narodowa (Warsaw, 1935); repr. in idem, Tematy, które mi

odradzano. Pisma etnograficzne rozproszone (Warsaw, 1980), pp. 277–313; Zbigniew Ogonowski, ‘Z
dziejów megalomanii narodowej’, Człowiek i Światopogląd, 12 (1977), pp. 105–22, and reproduced in
Filozofia polityczna w Polsce XVII wieku i tradycje demokracji europejskiej (Warsaw, 1992; 2nd exp.
edn 1999).
49 Wojciech Dębołęcki, Wywod iedynowłasnego panstwa swiata, w ktorym pokazuie X. Woyciech

Dębolecki z Konoiad Franciszkan, doktor Theologiey S. a general Społeczności wykupowania

więźniow. Źe nastarodawnieysze w Europie Krolestwo Polskie, lvbo Scythyckie: samo tylko na
świecie, ma prawdziwe successory Iadama, Setha, y Japheta; w panowaniu światu od Boga w Raiu
postanowionym: y źe dla tego Polaki Sarmatami zowią. A gweli temu y to się pokazuje, źe ięzyk
słowieński pierwotny iest na świecie. Nie gań, aź przeczytasz: bo wydany iest za pozwoleniem i
15
the time when it might happen, Dębołęcki points out that the late king Zygmunt III
had begun already to crush the power of the Ottomans, and spread the wings of the
White Eagle to Moscow and Sweden, so it should be expected that his successor (i.e.
Władysław IV) would soon complete the task and rule as the Northern or Aquilean
Monarch.50 Chronologically, Dębołęcki may have picked up the theme from
Sendivogius but as he uses quite different terms and is unlikely to have read
alchemical treatises, it is safer to assume that both drew on ideas current in early
Polish Sarmatism – the Aquilean Monarchy of Dębołęcki and Sendivogius’s
Monarchia Borealis being its different expressions.
The author whose contribution to the Sarmatian mythos cannot be
overestimated was Bartosz Paprocki (c.1543–1614). He wrote the first book on the
heraldry and genealogy of Polish nobility clans, for which he collected (and partly
invented) legends on their ancient origins which became very popular and a matter of
pride. After the election of Zygmunt III he emigrated to Bohemia, where he also
published genealogical compendia of Czech, Moravian and Silesian nobility; he is
known there as Bartoloměj Paprocký of Hloholy and Paprocka Vůla. In 1598 and 1599
he was associated closely with Michael Sendivogius and regarded him as an
important patron, dedicating to him one of three parts of his major work Ogrod
krolewsky (Prague, 1599) and including a fifteen-page dedicatory epistle, delineating
an invented mythical genealogy of his (supposed) family. A year earlier, he also
published a volume of poems in Czech which included several pieces dedicated to
Sendivogius, his family and friends. It is quite possible that it was Paprocki who
advised Sendivogius how to confirm his status of a nobleman and who designed the
coat-of-arms for him that was, just two years, later approved by the king of Poland.
Paprocki’s work on the heraldry of Polish knighthood also included the legend
on the origin of the Polish nation as the descendants of Lech (Lescus or Leschus),
whose brothers Czech and Rus were the progenitors of the Czechs and the
Ruthenians. The story was known much earlier in medieval Bohemia (in the Czech
version there were only two brothers: Czech and Lech), but through Paprocki it
became part of the Sarmatian mythos. When Sendivogius published his first treatise
in Prague in 1604, he hid his name in its anagram ‘Divi Leschi genus amo’ (I love the

przywileiem Jeo Krolewskiey Mści: po przeyrzeniu na to wysadzonych theol: y historykow (Warsaw,

1633), pp. 108–09.
50 Dębołęcki, Wywod, p. 111.

16
race of divine Leschus), which showed his allegiance not only to Poland but to its
Sarmatian culture as well. Thus the name of Anonymus Sarmata given to him by
Michael Maier was not only a designation of Sendivogius’s nationality, but also of his
cultural and ideological identity.
If, however, millenarian ideas were not important for Sarmatism – and
Sendivogius’s prophecy is clearly millenarian – one should also look to other sources
for his possible inspiration. Sendivogius may have been exposed to millenarian
concepts during his peregrinatio academica, as well as in Cracow, where he spent his
youth and served at the royal court. At about the time when Sendivogius was born,
there was in Cracow an informal circle of scholars interested in Paracelsian alchemy
and other ‘secrets of nature’, grouped around and patronised by Olbracht Łaski
(1536–1605), a powerful magnate who was later responsible for bringing John Dee
and Edward Kelley to Central Europe. In 1569, Łaski financed the translation into
Latin and publication of Paracelsus’s De praeparationibus and Archidoxae. The
translator, Adam Schröter (c.1525–c.1572), wrote in his introduction to the former:
‘Encouraged by the munificence and persuasion of the Illustrious Lord Olbracht
Łaski, the only patron and promoter of the study of secrets, I also intend to send
those books [Archidoxae] to the printers, for the benefit of humankind’,51 thus
confirming Łaski as having been deeply involved in occult studies for more than
fifteen years prior to his meeting John Dee. But the circle was established still earlier,
when Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514–1574), best known as ‘the first Copernican’ and
responsible for the publication of De revolutionibus in 1543, settled in Cracow in 1554
and remained there for twenty years.52 Along with his astronomical/astrological and
mathematical interests, he was also involved in alchemical studies, wrote several
treatises (now lost) and also planned to translate Paracelsus’s Archidoxae, perhaps
handing the task over to Schröter. However, the most intriguing fact, in a millenarian

51 De praeparationibus P. Theophrasti Paracelsi (Cracoviae, 1569), p. D v◦ (Tamen, cum victus

liberalitate et persuasione Illustris et Magnifici Herois Alberti a Lasko, unici secretiorum studiorum
patroni et promotoris, in animo habeam, ad communem totius humani generis salutem). The
introduction is a lengthy and knowledgeable presentation of Paracelsian medical alchemy. For a Polish
translation, see Adam Schroeter, ‘Przedmowa do “O przygotowaniach” Paracelsusa’, in Szczucki, ed.,
Filozofia i myśl, pp. 631–46, specifically p. 645.
52 Leszek Hajdukiewicz, ‘Retyk Jerzy Joachim’, in Polski słownik biograficzny, vol. 31 (Cracow, 1988),

pp. 255–9; Edward Rosen, ‘Rheticus, George Joachim’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New
York, 1950), vol. 11, pp. 395–8; Karl Heinz Burmeister, Georg Joachim Rheticus 1514–1574, eine Bio-
Bibliographie (Wiesbaden, 1967–1968); Dennis Danielson, The First Copernican. Georg Joachim
Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution (New York, 2006). His lost chemical texts are
discussed in Karl Heinz Burmeister, ‘Dzieła Joachima Retyka z dziedziny chemii’, Kwartalni Historii
Nauki i Techniki, 18 (1973), pp. 527–35.
17
context, is that in his Narratio prima (Gdańsk, 1540), the first printed exposition of
the Copernican system, Rheticus included a section entitled ‘The Kingdoms of the
World change with the motion of the centre of the eccentric’ (Ad motum centri
eccentrici Monarchias mundi mutari) which is strangely reminiscent of the
proposition Sendivogius made over half a century later:

I shall add a prediction. We see that all kingdoms have had their beginnings
when the centre of the eccentric was at some special point on the small circle.
Thus, when the eccentricity of the sun was at its maximum, the Roman
government became a monarchy; as the eccentricity decreased, Rome too
declined, as though aging, and then fell. When the eccentricity reached the
boundary and quadrant of mean value, the Mohammedan faith was
established; another great empire came into being and increased very rapidly,
like the change in the eccentricity. A hundred years hence, when the
eccentricity will be at its minimum, this empire too will complete its period. In
our time it is at its pinnacle from which equally swiftly, God willing, it will fall
with a mighty crash. We look forward to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ
when the centre of the eccentric reaches the other boundary of mean value, for
it was at that position at the creation of the world. This calculation does not
differ much from the saying of Elijah, who prophesied under divine inspiration
that the world would endure only 6,000 years, during which time nearly two
revolutions are completed. Thus it appears that this small circle is in very truth
the Wheel of Fortune, by whose turning the kingdoms of the world have their
beginnings and vicissitudes. For in this manner are the most significant
changes in the entire history of the world revealed, as though inscribed upon
this circle.53

The centre of the eccentric, the revolution of which Rheticus mentions, is an

element of the rather complicated model of the universe worked out by Copernicus.
Without going into technical details, when the Earth moves round the Sun, the
geometrical centre of its orbit is not the true Sun but the mean Sun, a point some
distance ‘off-centre’ which revolves around the Sun, to account for the cycle of Sun’s

53Edward Rosen, trans., Three Copernican Treatises (Mineola, NY, 2004; 1st ed. New York, 1939), p.
122. In the original p. B ij r◦.
18
apogee making a full circle in 53,242 years of 365 days. Comparing historical
observational data and those of his own, Copernicus found minor inaccuracies in this
scheme and added another eccentric in order to accommodate for the non-uniform
rate of the cycles of the precession of the equinoxes and the changes of the obliquity
of the ecliptic, so that the real centre of the orbit of the Earth moved in the opposite
direction on a small circle, the centre of which revolved around the true Sun.54 The
period of its revolution was calculated to be 3,434 years, which Rheticus interpreted
as roughly conforming to the prophesy of Elijah in the Babylonian Talmud.55
It is not clear whether the prophecy of Rheticus was inserted into Narratio
prima with Copernicus’s approval or not.56 Some historians believe he must have
consulted with his master,57 while others oppose this view, pointing out that there is
no trace of his interest in astrology apart from notes made during his university years
and some books he owned.58 Without entering this controversy, it is interesting to
note how the Sendivogian prophecy can be traced back to an element of the
Copernican model of the universe.
Even though Rheticus does not refer his scheme to cardinal directions, the
similarity of thinking is obvious and the wish to find a natural phenomenon which
governs major political and mundane changes is clearly the same. Moreover, in
another text Rheticus includes the same prediction and states ‘the anomaly of the
sphere of the fixed stars is nearing its third boundary. Whenever it reaches any such
boundary, there always occur the most significant changes in the world and in the

54 Nicholas Copernicus, De revolutionibus, III:20; English trans. Edward Rosen, On the Revolutions

(Warsaw, 1978), pp. 162–4.

55 Rosen, trans., Three Copernican Treatises, p. 122, note 56. The immediate source of the Elijah

prophesy, much discussed in Wittenberg circles, was Tractatus integer de nativitatibus by the Spanish
rabbi Paul of Burgos (1351–1435). See: Jesse Kraai, Rheticus’ Heliocentric Providence: A Study
Concerning the Astrology, Astronomy of the Sixteenth Century, PhD thesis, Ruprecht-Karls-
Universität Heidelberg, 2003, pp. 94–5; electronic version: http://www.ub.uni-
heidelberg.de/archiv/3254 .
56 Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), the editor of De revolutionibus and author of the anonymous

preface to it, was so impressed with the prediction of Rheticus that he claimed to have discovered it
earlier (Kraai, Rheticus’ Heliocentric Providence, pp. 98–100).
57 For example, John North, The Fontana history of astronomy and cosmology (Waukegan, IL, 1994),

p. 289; republished as Cosmos: an illustrated history of astronomy and cosmology (Chicago, 2008),
p. 314: ‘a curious astrological doctrine, put forward by Rheticus in the Narratio prima, possibly with
Copernicus’ cognizance’; Lynn Thorndike, History of magic and experimental science, 5 (New York,
1941), p. 419: ‘It is not improbable that Copernicus agreed with the astrological interpretation of the
earth's eccentric set forth by Rheticus.’
58 Rosen, trans., Three Copernican Treatises, p. 123: ‘I know of no evidence indicating that Copernicus

shared the astrological views of Rheticus.’

19
empires, as history makes clear’.59 Approaching the third boundary suggests the
imminent beginning of the fourth empire or Quarta Monarchia.
Olbracht Łaski was interested in such predictions and even hoped to become the
king of Poland himself after the death of Stefan Batory (Bathori), as can be seen from
the questions he asked the spirits of Dee and Kelley.60 Inspired by Rheticus, he may
have seen himself as the founder of the Fourth Monarchy. There is a faint possibility
of showing that Sendivogius accompanied Łaski to England,61 but it is probable that
he came within the influence of Łaski’s circle in Cracow and may have known
Rheticus’s millenarian ideas, filtered through later hermeticists and chiliasts active in
Cracow such as Hannibal Rosselli (1525–1593) or Francesco Pucci (1543–1597), both
of whom had documented contacts with John Dee when he stayed in Poland.62
Those multiple influences resulted in Sendivogius’s own version of the prophetic
scheme involving World Monarchies, about which we have only the general statement
he included in the preface to De sulphure. Were his Harmonia to have survived (if it
had ever been written at all), it would supply more details, perhaps along the lines of
Rheticus’s proposal, explaining the mechanism of the succession of empires by their
correlation with natural phenomena.
The prophecy Sendivogius made for Poland did not find fertile ground there and
was hardly noticed. On the other hand, it was welcomed across Europe by many

59 Rheticus’s preface to Werner’s De triangulis sphaericis, quoted by Rosen in ibid., p. 123.

60 Joseph H. Peterson, ed., John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery. Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic
(Boston, MA, 2003), p. 416.
61 On 6 November 1583, while in Trittau on the way to Poland, Dee noted amongst those travelling

with him ‘Myrcopskie, my Lord his man’. (Meric Casaubon, ed., A true & faithful relation of what
passed for many years between Dr: John Dee ... and some spirits (London, 1659; facsimile repr.:
London, 1974; New York, 1992), p. 47; Edward Fenton, ed., The diaries of John Dee (Charlbury, 1998),
p. 107. It may have been a variant of the name ‘Maczolkofsky’ used by Sendivogius at his matriculation
at Leipzig in 1590 (see Prinke, ‘Beyond patronage,’ pp. 197–8; idem, ‘Michał Sędziwój’, p. 106).
62 Meric Casaubon, ed., A true & faithful relation, p. 397 (19 April 1585: I took Ghostly counsel of

Doctor Hannibal, the great Divine, that had now set out some of his Commentaries upon Pymander,
Hermetis Trismegisti). Pucci participated in some séances (ibid., pp. 409–17), but later had serious
controversies with Dee (ibid., pp. 429–44); James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The private diary of Dr.
John Dee and the catalogue of his library of manuscripts (London, 1842), p. 23, and pp. 26–27. For
Roselli, see Jan Czerkawski, ‘Hannibal Roselli jako przedstawiciel hermetyzmu filozoficznego w
Polsce’, Roczniki Filozoficzne, 15 (1967), pp. 119–40; idem, ‘Hannibala Roselliego koncepcja pia
philosophia’, Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej, 15 (1969), pp. 107–24. For Pucci, see
Lech Szczucki, W kręgu myślicieli heretyckich (Warsaw, 1972), pp. 256–65; Miriam Eliav-Feldon,
‘Secret Societies, Utopias, and Peace Plans: The Case of Francesco Pucci’, Journal of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984), pp. 139–58; R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and his world. A study in
intellectual history 1576-1612, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1984), pp. 102–05; Ron Heisler, ‘John Dee and the
secret societies’, The Hermetic Journal (1992), pp. 12–24, and numerous Italian publications, the most
recent being Giorgio Caravale, Il profeta disarmato. L'eresia di Francesco Pucci nell'Europa del
Cinquecento (Bologna, 2011), and the most important edition of sources: Francesco Pucci, Lettere,
documenti e testimonianze, ed. Luigi Firpo and Renato Piattoli, 2 vols (Florence, 1955–1959).
20
authors of prophetic pamphlets, as well as by serious scholars. By far the most
important of these was Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638), the great
encyclopaedist and author of numerous books on diverse topics. Until recently he was
remembered mostly as Comenius’s teacher in Herborn but, since Howard Hotson’s
extensive research on Alsted,63 his importance and lasting influence has been re-
evaluated. Among his many discoveries, Hotson revlealed that Alsted’s millenarian
thinking was heavily influenced by Sendivogius’s prophecy. In his Thesaurus
chronologiae (1624 and 1630) Alsted included a tabular presentation of various
systems of world chronology, including ‘The Four Monarchies according to
Astronomers and the four cardinal points’ and indicating that the Fourth Monarchy,
which will be instituted by the Northern Lion, is to be expected soon. In another
work, Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis (1627 and 1630), he identified his sources
as Paracelsus and Michael Sendivogius. Ten years earlier, in Praecognita theologica
(1614), he constructed a circular diagram representing the changes of world empires,
as if inspired by Rheticus, but really drawing on yet another source, De circulo
operum et iudiciorum Dei (1608) by Stephanus Pannonius. Hotson proved Alsted’s
dependence on Pannonius convincingly, but his diagram was modified almost beyond
recognition and adapted to the cardinal points concept, absent in Pannonius, placing
Poland as the Northern Monarchy.
While Hotson showed how Alsted ‘harmonised’ the prophecies of Paracelsus,
Sendivogius and Pannonius, Didier Kahn questioned this, suggesting that it was
Sendivogius who drew on Alsted because the Herborn professor published his
diagram in 1614, two years before Sendivogius’s Tractatus de sulphure.64 Kahn
maintained that when Sendivogius wrote ‘the Philosophers reckon these Monarchies
not according to the powerfulness of them, but according to the corners of the world’,
he actually meant Alsted as the philosopher who proposed such a scheme. This is
difficult to accept, however, as Alsted himself indicates Paracelsus, Sendivogius and
Pannonius as his sources,65 and would certainly not have quoted Sendivogius as a

63 Howard Hotson, ‘Johann Heinrich Alsted's Relations with Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia: Patronage,

Piety and Pansophia’, Acta Comeniana, 12 (1997), pp. 13–35; idem, Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588–
1638. Between Renaissance, reformation and universal reform (Oxford, 2000); idem, Paradise
Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordrecht, 2000).
64 Kahn, ‘Le Tractatus’, pp. 201–02.
65 Johann Heinrich Alsted, Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis (Frankfurt, 1630), p. 119 (not p. 229,

as misprinted in Hotson, Alsted, p. 193), and idem, Paradise, p. 56: ‘Multi ex superioris & hujus seculi
scriptoribus multa de Elia artista, qui sit venturus; de Leone Septentrionali, qui sit praeforibus; de
quarta monarchia septentrionali; de magna reformatione; de conversione Judaeorum, &c. Vide
21
major source had the latter just copied Alsted’s own ideas. The text clearly lists
several prophesies and then their respective authors, of which Elias Artista and
Northern Lion are obviously attributable to Paracelsus; then comes the Fourth
Northern Monarchy and Sendivogius, and finally Pannonius with the great
reformation and conversion of the Jews. Additionally, had the Monarchia Borealis
been Alsted’s own idea, there would have been no need for an explanation of the
name ‘Heliocantharus Borealis’ given to Sendivogius by Oswald Croll in 1608. Why,
therefore, did Alsted use Sendivogius’s scheme for his diagram published two years
before Tractatus de sulphure? He may have known the text in manuscript but, as
suggested earlier, it seems that the prophecy was a last minute addition as a quick
response to the publication of the Rosicrucian Confessio Fraternitatis. Thus the only
possibility is that Alsted knew about Sendivogius’s millenarian ideas from the Polish
alchemist himself.
Actually, it seems certain that Alsted knew Sendivogius personally, as his
gratulatory epigram is included in the Frankfurt 1611 edition of De lapide
philosophorum:

EPIGRAMMA. EPIGRAM.
In On the
VERE AVREOS DE TRULY GOLDEN
LAPIDE PHILOSOPHORVM Treatise on the PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
tractatus Anonymi Leschi. by Anonymous Leschus.

Sunt multi, lapidis nostri queis fabrica sordet;
Hi sordent merito, maxime Lesche, tibi.
Maxime Lesche placet tibi triga: Deus, natura, Ars.
Triga tibi haec placeat, maxime Lesche, diu.
Perge mari uxorem coniungere, solvere iunctos
Perge. Deus foveat coepta secunda diu!
Perge malos chymicos convellere, perge docere:
Ut ne dilapident omnia pro lapide.
There are many who think making of our stone is sordid;
Such sordidness serves you, o great Leschus.
Great Leschus, three things please you: God, nature and Art.
That trinity will please you for a long time, great Leschus.
Proceed marrying husband to wife, dissolving the joined
Proceed. God favours those who try a second time!
Proceed to shatter evil chemists, proceed to teach.
And do not waste everything for the stone.

Iohan-Henricus Alstedius, Pro-

fessor Philosophus f. Fran-
cofurti ad Moenum, anno
1611. feriis Paschalibus.

Theophrastum Paracelsum, Michaelem Sendivogium tract. de Sulphure, Stephanum Pannonium de

circulo operum & judiciorum DEI.’
22
 This fact, overlooked by Howard Hotson (even though he was close to
discovering it, noting that some bibliographies mistakenly ascribed the 1611 edition of
De lapide philosophorum to Alsted himself),66 had already been discussed briefly in
1968 by Roman Bugaj.67 Without Howard Hotson’s extensive research, however, he
could not realise the consequences of it and thus did not follow that clue. After
Hotson’s two monographs were published, Didier Kahn again recalled Alsted’s
epigram, which now gained much more weight, as proof that they had to have known
each other personally.68 It may be added that it is also proof that their acquaintance
was of a very special nature, as this is the only case when prefatory material was
added with the apparent acceptance of Sendivogius, and none carries such personal
meaning as this epigram.69
When looking for confirmation that their relationship was close and lasting, it is
instructive to consider the alchemical authorities Alsted quotes in his writings,
especially during the period between 1611 and 1624. Of special note is his
correspondence with Konrad von der Tann, which dealt with various esoteric
subjects, Rosicrucians and alchemy.70 In one of the earliest surviving letters, dated
1614, Alsted lists his alchemical authorities including the Emerald Table of Hermes
Trismegistos, an unidentified Christian poet, the Druids (whom, Hotson explains, he
always placed within prisca philosophia), two titles by Paracelsus and two by Bernard
of Treviso, then two recent authors Alexander von Suchten and Heinrich Khunrath,
and finally the mysterious ‘meus magister’.71 That no mention is made of Sendivogius
just three years after the epigram glorifying him is conspicuous – unless he is indeed
meant to be ‘his master’, the one whose name Alsted did not want to disclose.
The book containing Alsted’s systematic exposition of chemical theories was
Physica harmonica, first published in 1610 as Compendium physicae but without a
section on alchemy, which was added (under the heading Physica chemica) to the
second edition of 1612 (Systema physicae harmonicae, pp. 179–223) and retained

66 Hotson, Alsted, 90, note 110.

67 Bugaj, Michał Sędziwój, p. 207–08.
68 Kahn, ‘Le Tractatus’, pp. 201–02. Besides the reprint in Theatrum chemicum listed by Kahn, the

epigram was also copied by Henning Witte in his Memoriae philosophorum, oratorum, poetarum,
historicorum et philologorum nostri seculi clarissimorum renovatae decas prima (- nona),
(Königsberg and Frankfurt, 1677–1679), vol. 2: ‘Vita Michaelis Sendivogii, Poloni Nobilis Baronis’, pp.
615–28, specifically p. 627.
69 Some certainly pirated editions have editorial prefaces but nothing comparable to Alsted’s epigram.
70 Hotson, Alsted, pp. 105–09 and pp. 147–62.
71 Hotson, Alsted, pp. 147-148.

23
with minor expansion in the final edition of 1616 (pp. 223–69)72. It summarises and
‘harmonises’ the doctrines and teachings of chemical philosophers, among whom
there are those from the letter to Konrad von der Tann, such as the Tabula
smaragdina of Hermes Trismegistos, Paracelsus and ‘Comes’ Bernard of Treviso, as
well as a whole range of others, including Thomas de Bononia, Johannes Augustinus
Pantheus, Gerhard Dorn, John Dee, Ewald Vogel, Johann Wolfgang Dienheim,
Martin Ruland and Oswald Croll. But there is no mention of Michael Sendivogius,
even though Alsted refers twice to the uniquely Sendivogian notion of the seed which
is 1/8200th part of any body.73 This mysterious number appears in later authors
(Johann Baptista van Helmont, Athanasius Kircher, and others) but Alsted’s use of it
here is probably the earliest instance of accepting it.74 On closer reading of the text, it
becomes apparent that many passages were rewritten verbatim from Sendivogius’s
De lapide philosophorum, sometimes slightly abridged or paraphrased (three
examples are presented in the appendix below but there are more). The inclusion of
Alsted’s epigram in Sendivogius’s De lapide philosophorum of 1611 and the new
chemical section in Systema physicae harmonicae of 1612 narrows the date of their
encounter to late 1610 or early 1611. The textual dependence of the latter on the
former leaves no doubt that ‘meus magister’ is indeed Michael Sendivogius and,
moreover, that Alsted was specifically asked by him not to reveal his name.
Such a conclusion may be supported additionally by the fact that Sendivogius
was almost obsessively secretive. He published his treatises hiding his name in
anagrams and in the preface to the ‘Parable’ appended to De lapide philosophorum
he directly requested his readers:75

72 The evolution of Alsted’s book is discussed in: Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning: Ramism
and its German Ramifications 1543-1630 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 231-234; see also: idem, Alsted, p. 238;
idem, Paradise, p. 204. I have compared the 1612 and 1616 editions and the texts of the Physica
chemica sections are identical except for about two pages added in the latter, from p. 261 (Vulgo
statuunt...) to the end of the chapter, and a short quotation from Psalm 147 at the end of the whole
section.
73 Johann Heinrich Alsted, Systema physicae harmonicae (Herborn, 1612), p. 203 and p. 214; idem,

Physica harmonica (Herborn, 1616), p. 247 and p. 257.

74 Karin Figala, ‘Die Alchemistenzahl 8200’, in Zlatko Herkov, ed., II Radovi I. Medunarodnog

Kongresa za Povijesnu Metrologiju, Zagreb, 28–30. listopada 1975 (Zagreb, 1975), pp. 415–32;
eadem, ‘Newton as alchemist’, History of Science, 15 (1977), pp. 102–37; Newman, Gehennical Fire, p.
87.
75 Michael Sendivogius, A new light of alchymy (London, 1674), p. 50. The original is: ‘Si quaeritis quis

sim, Cosmopolita sum: si me nostis, & boni ac honesti viri esse desideratis, tacebitis: si me non nostris
nolite de me inquirere’. (1749 edn, p. 585.) The use of the Greek word ‘Cosmopolita’ is rather unique at
the time and provides another link to John Dee, as well as to Guillaume Postel and others, while
subsequently it was used by Joachim Morsius and Eirenaeus Philalethes (now identified with George
Starkey).
24
 If you ask who I am, I am one that can live any where [Cosmopolita]: if you
know me, and desire to shew your selves good and honest men, you shall hold
your tongue: if you know me not, do not enquire after me.

As discussed above, people such as Oswald Croll and Michael Maier, who knew
Sendivogius, complied with his request, even though they could not resist encoding
some clues concerning his identity in their texts. So Alsted must also have wanted to
appear ‘a good and honest man’, and only invoked his name in his later, post-1620,
publications, when his fascination with alchemy (and perhaps his contacts with
Sendivogius) diminished. An even more striking proof that those who knew the
Polish alchemist did not use his name is supplied by another of Alsted’s alchemical
correspondents, Michael Potier of Essen, with whom he exchanged letters
(documented in the period from 1617 to 1620) discussing alchemy and the
Rosicrucians, and tried out his transmutatory recipes.76 In 1622 Potier published a
book entitled Veredarius hermetico-philosophicus, which he dedicated to
‘Nobilissimis et celeberrimis viris Dn. Michaeli Sendivogio, Polono. Dn. Alexandro
Sedonio e Molia. Dn. Guilielmo Homliton, Scoto’, his near contemporaries who were
reported to possess the Philosopher’s Stone. The other two are mentioned just once in
the text, while Sendivogius is quoted constantly and referred to by name on many
pages, and it is mentioned several times with pride that he is Potier’s namesake (‘mei
nominis philosophus, cognomento Sendivogius’).77 In his later Fons chymicus (1637,
preface dated 1631, text dated 1629), however, he quotes Sendivogius throughout
again as the only contemporary authority, but calls him just ‘The Philosopher’, using
such references as ‘Philosophus in duodecim Tractatibus’ or ‘Philosophus in Tractatu
de Sulphure’.78 It may be speculated that Alsted recommended Potier to Sendivogius
and that, after they met, the Essen alchemist refrained from mentioning his name in
writing at the alchemist’s request.
If such behaviour was a rule, then the aforementioned Rosicrucian enthusiast
and alchemist Raphael Egli did not know Sendivogius before 1612 and worked out

76 Hotson, Alsted, pp. 101–02 and pp. 156–7.

77 Potier, Veredarius, p. 16 and p. 253.
78 Michael Potier, Fons chymicus, id est: Vera Avri Et Argenti conficiendi, ex naturalis Philosophiae

Venis Scaturiens ratio (Coloniae, 1637), pp. 55, 56, 58, 60, 97, 100, 109, and others.
25
himself the riddle devised by Oswald Croll, as he identifies the Polish alchemist in his
Cheiragogia Heliana:

Now let us come to that most Excellent Author of Twelve Tractates upon the
Stone, whose Anagram is, Qui Divi Leschi Genus Amo, that is, Michael
Sendivogius, That Polander, whom Oswald Crollius in the preface to his
Basilica, calls Heliocantharus Borealis, The Northern Beetle, in whose hands
he saw with great admiration and amazement, the wonderfull Virtue and
Operation of that Tincture commonly call'd the Philosophers Stone.79

The fact that Sendivogius actually asked the people he met to keep his name
secret is confirmed by the testimony of letters written by Paul Nagel (c.1575–1624)80,
an astrologer, theosophist and school rector in Torgau near Leipzig, to Arnold Kerner,
a Paracelsian physician in Leipzig and Nagel’s fellow millenarian, both of whom
Sendivogius visited in 1619.81 The text of the letters indicates that they were
somewhat amused by the request, probably because by that time everyone knew the
identity of the author of the celebrated treatises.
Alsted must have remained in active contact with Sendivogius over a number of
years, for in 1617 he reported in a letter to Konrad von der Tann that he received
various alchemical substances from Cracow via a bookseller in Cologne, which

79 George Thor, An easie introduction to the philosophers magical gold, to which is added, Zorasters
[!] cave, as also John Pontanus Epistle upon the mineral fire, otherwise called, The philosophers
stone (London, 1667), p. 29; earlier published in English as Cheiragogia heliana, a manuduction to
the philosopher's magical gold (London, 1659). The original Latin reads: ‘nunc ad praestantissimum
Auctorem libelli de duodecim Tractatibus Lapidis Philosophici accedamus, cuius anagramma fuit, QUI
DIVI LESCHI GENUS AMO, quod est, MICHAEL SENDIVOGIUS, Polonus ille, quem Osvvaldus
Crollius in praefatione Basilicae suae vocat HELIOCANTHARUM BOREALEM, apud quem Tincturam
Lapidis Philoso[pho]rum, ejusque magnam vim & operationem ipsemet stupescens pervidit.’ Nicolaus
Niger Happelius, Cheiragogia Heliana de auro philosophico (Marburg, 1612), p. 276; see also:
Theatrum chemicum, vol. 4, pp. 265–87, specifically pp. 276–9.
80 For Paul Nagel, see: Alastair Hamilton, The Apocryphal Apocalypse: the reception of the second

book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1999), pp. 177–8; Leigh
T.I. Penman, Unanticipated Millenniums. The Lutheran experience of millenarian thought 1600–
1630, doctoral dissertation, School of Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne, 2008 (I am
indebted to the author for kindly allowing me to read it.)
81 I am grateful to Leigh T.I. Penman for sharing the texts of three letters from Nagel to Kerner

mentioning Sendivogius which he found in Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. One of them is referred to

independently by Rudolf Werner Soukup, ‘Michael Sendivogius: An alchemist and Austrian-Polish
double agent of the beginning 17th century’, in Michał Kokowski, ed., The Global and the Local: The
History of Science and the Cultural Integration of Europe. Proceedings of the 2nd ICESHS (Cracow,
Poland, 6–9 September 2006), pp. 425–8, specifically p. 428; electronic version:
http://www.2iceshs.cyfronet.pl/2ICESHS_Proceedings/Chapter_15/R-7_Soukup.pdf.
26
included the ‘steel of Sendivogius’.82 Because Sendivogius published in Cologne his
Dialogus in 1607 and then the Tractatus de sulphure in 1616, he certainly had good
contacts with booksellers there, and since he lived in his cottage in Cracow from 1614
until 1625, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that the sender of the ‘steel’ was
anyone other than Sendivogius himself. It is also quite probable that Sendivogius’s
plan of writing Harmonia was inspired by Alsted’s Physica harmonica and other
publications in the vein of ‘harmonising’ opinions of different authorities.
It now also becomes clear why Alsted reacted with such reservations to the
Rosicrucian furore and of all the Fraternity’s publications the one he liked most was
that by Philipp a Gabella, which plagiarised long sections from Sendivogius.83
Evidently he preferred the millenarian interpretation of the Four Monarchies as
expounded by Sendivogius to that of the conservative view of the Fama Fraternitatis,
which accepted the status quo stating that ‘in Politia we acknowledge the Roman
Empire and Quartam Monarchiam for our Christian head’.84
The initial contact between Sendivogius and Alsted cannot have been accidental.
Typically, it was the author who asked his friends to write poems honouring his work,
which were printed along with any prefaces in prose or dedicatory epistles before the
actual text,85 so it is hard to believe that Alsted just sent his poem to Sendivogius. The
latter must have known Alsted personally and probably was impressed with the
young scholar’s erudition and interpretation of his treatise. Perhaps the twenty-three
(or possibly less) year old Alsted was recommended by an acquaintance to the older
Sendivogius who, at forty-five, was already a legend in alchemical circles. One
possible link might have been through the extended Pincier family clan from the town
of Wetter (which included Alsted’s mother and a number of important alchemists and
Paracelsian physicians).86 The family of Oswald Croll were natives of Wetter87 and he

82 Hotson, Alsted, p. 149.

83 Hotson, Alsted, pp. 106–07.
84 Thomas Vaughan, ed., The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R:C: (London, 1652), quoted

from the text edited by Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boulder, CO, 1978), p. 249;
the original 1614 Kassel edition, p. 30: ‘In der Policey erkennen wir das Römische Reich vnnd Quartam
Monarchiam für vnser vnnd der Christen Haupt.’
85 Compare, for example, a letter of Oswald Croll to Westonia asking if she would ‘gracefully take the

trouble at her leisure to write a few distichs in honour of my Chemical Basilica, soon to be published’
[‘sua gratia gravetur, per otium aliquot Disticha in honorem meae Basilicae Chymicae, suo tempore
edendae, conscribere’]. Elizabeth Jane Weston, Collected writings, trans. Donald Cheney, Brenda M.
Hosington and D.K. Money (Toronto, 2000), pp. 166–7.
86 Hotson, Alsted, p. 55. For more genealogical relationships of Alsted see idem, ‘Arbor sanguinis,

arbor disciplinarum: The intellectual genealogy of Johann Heinrich Alsted. Part I. Alsted’s Intellectual
Inheritance’, Acta Comeniana, 25 (2011), pp. 47–92. I am indebted to Howard Hotson for allowing me
27
kept in contact with his brothers, who later claimed the inheritance (including one
ducat per copy of Basilica chymica) after his death and in 1609 were in contact with
Petr Vok of Rožmberk.88 An important relative was the first professor of chymiatria
at Marburg, Johann Hartmann (1568–1631), who entered into the family through his
marriage to Susanna, daughter of Johann Mylius. The alchemical author Johann
Daniel Mylius (c.1583–post 1630), who was Hartmann’s student, was thus also his
brother-in-law.89 Another ‘Wetteran’ was Johann Combach, professor of theology at
Marburg, a friend of Alsted’s from his student years and later the author of the
second earliest reply to the Rosicrucian Fama Fraternitatis which he read in
manuscript.90 His brother Ludwig (1590–1657) was a physician of Landgraf Moritz
and translator into Latin of a French alchemical treatise by Clovis Hesteau de
Nuysement, heavily influenced by Sendivogius (and believed, by some authors, to
have been authored by him).91

to read this article before publication. For the importance of genealogical relationships for intellectual
history compare an earlier study by the same author: ‘The Conservative Face of Contractual Theory:
The Monarchomach Servants of the Count of Nassau-Dillenburg’, in Emilio Bonfatti, Giuseppe Duso
and Merio Scattola, eds, Politische Begriffe und historisches Umfeld in der Politica methodice digesta
des Johannes Althusius (Wiesbaden, 2002), pp. 251–89.
87 Johann Jacob Plitt, Nachrichten aus der Oberhessischen Stadt Wetter, und den daraus

entstammenden Gelehrten (Frankfurt, 1769), p. 147–57.

88 Oswaldus Crollius, De signaturis internis rerum. Die lateinische Editio princeps (1609) und die

deutsche Erstübersetzung (1623) (Ausgewählte Werke 1), ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle
(Stuttgart, 1996), p. 49.
89 Not noted by Hotson but listed in Plitt, Nachrichten, pp. 217–19 as a son of Friedrich and so

probably a cousin of Susanna but Ulrich Neumann in Neue Deutsche Biographie 18 (1997), p. 667–
668, makes him a son of Johann and Susanna’s brother. Hartmann is called his ‘Schwager’ by Joachim
Telle, Sol und Luna. Literar- und alchemiegeschichtliche Studien zu einem altdeutschen Bildgedicht.
Mit Text- und Bildanhang (Hürtgenwald, 1980), p. 113, with reference to Christoph von Rommel,
Neuere Geschichte von Hessen (Kassel, 1837).
90 Hotson, Alsted, p. 56 and p. 100. For other members of the family see Plitt, Nachrichten, p. 113–15.
91 Tractatus de vero sale secreto philosophorum, et de universali mundi spiritu. Gallicae primae

scriptus in supplementum diu desiderati tertij principij Cosmopolitae, sive ut vulgo creditur, M.
Sendivogii ... quod de Sale promisit. Nunc simplicissimo stylo Latine versus a Ludovico Combachio
D. & Illustrissimorum Hassiae P. P. Medico Ordinario (Kassel, 1651). The hypothesis that it was
originally a treatise written by Sendivogius was put forward by Zbigniew Szydło, Water Which Does
not Wet Hands, pp. 68–9, but his arguments are not convincing. He also assumed, following Roman
Bugaj’s belief, that another treatise of Nuysement, Traittez de l'Harmonie et Constitution generalle du
vray sel, secret des Philosophes, & de l'Espirit du Mond (Paris, 1621), was in fact Sendivogius’s lost
work, but the basis for this claim is hardly convincing either. On the other hand, Sylvain Matton and
Didier Kahn showed that the latter treatise was based on (or even plagiarised from) Jean Brouaut’s
Trois livres des elemens chymiques et spagyriques (late 16th c., first published: Paris, 1646); see:
Sylvain Matton, ‘La figure de Démogorgon dans la littérature alchimique,’ in Didier Kahn and Sylvain
Matton. ed., Alchimie: art, histoire et mythes (Paris-Milan, 1995), pp. 265–346, specifically pp. 308–
17; Didier Kahn, ‘La Faculté de médecine de Paris en échec face au paracelsisme: enjeux et
dénouement réels du procès de Roch Le Baillif,’ in Ilana Zinguer and Heinz Schott. ed., Paracelsus und
seine internationale Rezeption in der frühen Neuzeit (Leiden, 1998), pp. 146–20, specifically pp. 213–
14.
28
 The genealogical relationships of the Wetter clan can be extended to two
important alchemical authors and editors, Joachim Tancke (1557–1609) and Johann
Thölde (c.1565–1624). The former was the professor of poetry at the University of
Leipzig when Sendivogius studied there in 1590, and of anatomy from 1594.92 He
corresponded with Johann Kepler and Martin Ruland in Prague93 and edited Kurtzer
Unterricht vom Stein der Weisen (in Promptuarium alchemiae, 1610) which was,
effectively, a summary of Sendivogius’s treatise.94 Thölde was probably the author or
compiler of alchemical texts attributed to Basilius Valentinus.95 He cooperated with
Tancke and they often refer to each other as ‘Schwager’ or ‘affinus’.96 In the preface
to Basilius Valentinus, Von den natürlichen und übernatürlichen Dingen (1603),
Thölde addresses both Tancke and Johann Hartmann as ‘Herren Schwager und
guten Freuden’. Bernard Richter suggested that the term was used figuratively for
their ‘spiritual affinity’ but there is no reason why genuine affinity should be
excluded.97
Friedrich Roth-Scholtz, writing in 1718, says that during his studies in Leipzig
Sendivogius lived in ‘good understanding’ with Tancke and Thölde, and that when
visiting Marburg he developed great friendship with Hartmann.98 Still, their familial
links to Alsted’s mother are too distant and uncertain to be convincing. Moreover, as
both Croll and Tancke had been dead for at least two years by 1611, the ‘Wetteran’

92 Udo Benzenhöfer, ‘Joachim Tancke (1557–1609). Leben und Werk eines Leipziger Paracelsisten’, in
Paracelsus und Paracelsisten. Vorträge 1984/85 (Vienna, 1987).
93 Ibid., pp. 54–5; Karin Figala, ‘Kepler and alchemy’, Vistas in Astronomy, 18 (1975), pp. 457–69.
94 It was clearly recognised as such by his contemporaries as the full text of the German translation was

included in the second volume of Promptuarium which was published in 1614 but probably not
prepared by Tancke himself (Benzenhöfer, Joachim Tancke, pp. 55–6).
95 Hans Gerhard Lenz, Johann Thoelde. Ein Paracelsist und ‘Chymicus’ und seine Beziehungen zu

Landgraf Moritz von Hessen-Kassel, Diss., Marburg: Philipps-Universität, 1981; Claus Priesner,
‘Johann Thoelde und die Schriften des Basilius Valentinus’ in Christoph Meinel. ed., Die Alchemie in
der europäischen Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1986), pp. 107–18; Oliver
Humberg, ‘Neues Licht auf die Lebensgeschichte des Johann Thölde’ in Hans Gerhard Lenz. ed.,
Triumphwagen des Antimons. Basilius Valentinus, Keckring, Kirchweger; Text, Kommentare,
Studien (Elberfeld, 2004), pp. 352–74.
96 E.g. Tancke in the preface to Paul Eck, Clavis philosophorum (s.l., 1604) (Dn. I. Tholdio ... affini

meo colendo).
97 Bernard Richter, J.T. und der Stein der uhralten Weisen: Untersuchungen am Corpus Basilius nach

einem Sammelband des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts (Baden-Baden, 2003), p. 20. Udo Benzenhöfer
accepts the affinity between Tancke and Thölde (op. cit., p. 13).
98 Friedrich Roth-Scholtz, ‚Vorbericht an der Leser‘, p. 13, in Michaelis Sendivogii Chymische

Schrifften (Nuremberg, 1718). A 1612 letter from Hartmann to Borbonius suggests he had not known
Sendivogius; see Gustav Gellner, Životopis lékaře Borbonia a výklad jeho deníků (Prague, 1938), pp.
94–5. Also Bruce T. Moran kindly informed me that in his extensive research on Landgraf Moritz’s
alchemical circle he found no trace of Sendivogius. Thus, the only evidence for that visit remains the
statement by Girolamo Pinocci in the letter written in 1661.
29
clan as the intermediary between Alsted and Sendivogius should be treated with
caution.
Obviously there may have been any number of other links, either personal or
through correspondence, that resulted in bringing the two men together. Alsted had
close contacts with Bartholomeus Keckermann’s students and friends in Gdańsk, one
of whom, Adrian Pauli (1583–1622), a doctor of medicine and professor of natural
sciences at the Gymnasium, recorded that Sendivogius had sent a bar of iron, the
upper part of which had been transmuted into gold, to Bartholomew Schachmann
(1559–1614), the mayor of Gdańsk,99 so he must have been a respected figure there
and may have met Schachmann in 1579 when the future mayor was studying in
Cracow. The person who carried that alchemical gift was Jean de la Blanque, the
French resident at the Polish royal court from at least 1605, who travelled to Gdańsk
in 1611 to take up the office of French consul in that city.100 Certainly Sendivogius
knew him as a royal secretary and from his involvement in diplomacy.
Because Sendivogius moved in the highest spheres of society, young Alsted may
have been introduced to him by a member of Polish aristocracy such as the Herborn
student Władysław Ostroróg, or the latter’s tutor Abraham Wysocki (to whom Alsted
dedicated his edition of Giordano Bruno’s manuscript in 1612), or more probably by
someone related to Karel the Elder of Žerotín (1564–1636), another dedicatee of
Alsted’s book of 1610. Sendivogius’s fiancée, Anna Belvic of Štampach, who broke off
the engagement in 1606,101 married Jan Lorenc of Žerotín (1583–1619), a distant
cousin of Karel and brother of his sister-in-law, so evidently the Polish alchemist was
known in those circles. Another link to Žerotín was the renowned humanist and
alchemist Václav Lavín of Ottenfeld (Venceslaus Lavinus),102 who was Karel’s tutor

99 Disputatio physica de metallis quam Sacrosanctae favente triade in Celeberrimo Dantiscanorum

Athenaeo Sub Praesidio Clarissimi ac Doctissimi Viri D. D. Adriani Pauli Phys. ac Metaph. P. P. Ad
diem 29. Aprilis Dantisci. Typis Andreae Hünefeldt. A. MDCXVII, p. 22 (‘clavum ferreum, exemplo
Florentini, similiter mediâ, sed superiore sui parte á Secretario illo [Sendivogius] in Aurum
conversum’).
100 Jean de la Blanque was a nephew of Pontus de la Gardie (1520–1585) and served with him as a

captain in the Swedish army. He was close to king John III of Sweden and thus, although a Huguenot,
gained the confidence of his son Zygmunt III of Poland, who accepted him as the resident of Henry IV
of France. His voluminous correspondence partially survives; see Wacław Sobieski, Henryk IV wobec
Polski i Szwecyi 1602-1610 (Cracow, 1907).
101 Zikmund Winter, ‘Kámen filosofský’, Květy, 15 (1893), p. 199 (reprinted several times); ibid., Život

církevní v Čechách: Kulturně-historický obraz z XV. a XVI. století (Prague, 1895), p. 333.
102 Didier Kahn, ‘Les sources labyrinthiques du Discours d’autheur incertain sur la pierre des

philosophes (1590)’, in Alfredo Perifano, ed., La transmission des savoirs au Moyen Âge et à la
Renaissance, vol. 2: Au XVIe siècle, (Besançon, 2005), pp. 223–47; idem, Alchimie et paracelsisme en
France à la fin de la Renaissance (1567−1625) (Geneva, 2007), p. 333.
30
and personal physician before he moved to Prague, where in the last years of the
century he cooperated closely with Sendivogius under the patronage of Ludvík
Korálek of Těšín (d.1599) within the alchemical circle which included Oswald Croll
and Jan Kapr of Kaprštejn, earlier a close associate of John Dee and Edward
Kelley.103
Didier Kahn suggested Sendivogius and Alsted may have met through the
Frankfurt publisher Anton Humm, who issued both Sendivogius’s treatise and three
works by Alsted in 1611 (including the one dedicated to Władysław Ostroróg).104 This
was the beginning of Alsted’s association with Humm, which lasted until 1616 and
resulted in ten publications in all, so if they had not met before, a connection here is
quite possible. But even more likely is the link through Mikołaj Wolski, Sendivogius’s
patron at the time, who is documented as an intermediary between the Scottish neo-
Latin poet Thomas Seget (1569/70–1627), a friend of Kepler and Galileo on the one
hand, and Raphael Egli and Joachim Morsius on the other.105 In 1612 he came to
Poland to visit Socinian centres and prominent Polish Brethren (Martin Ruarus and
Samuel Przypowski), and he took a manuscript of the Polish neo-Latin poet Szymon
Szymonowic to Morsius, who published it. In the same year Szymonowic wrote to
Seget from Prague that, through Mikołaj Wolski, they would be able to correspond.106
Later links may have been forged through Johann Hartmann’s chymiatric
laboratory in Marburg. Although Sendivogius’s visit there in 1616 is not documented
convincingly, there was a student ‘Simon Batkovius Losenas aus Polen’ who studied
in Hartmann’s laboratory in 1615,107 together with Johann Petrus Lotichius from
Wetterau, who received a doctorate of medicine in Marburg in 1619, so was certainly
known to Alsted, and Johann Philipp Moltherus, also a doctor promoted in 1619,
whose father Johann was Alsted’s teacher.108 The Polish chymist’s name was Szymon
Piotr Batkowski. Later, for some time, he was a servant or laborant to Sendivogius

103 Halliwell, ed., The private diary, pp. 24–30; Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle, eds, Oswaldus
Crollius, Alchemomedizinische Briefe (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 165–6.
104 Kahn, ‘Le Tractatus’, p. 202.
105 For Seget, see Edward Rosen, ‘Thomas Seget of Seton’, Scottlsh Historical Review, 28 (1949), pp.

91–5; Henryk Barycz, ‘Angielski gość w Polsce’ in idem, W blaskach epoki Odrodzenia (Warsaw,
1968), pp. 327–52.
106 Otakar Odložilík, ‘Thomas Seget: A Scottish friend of Szymon Szymonowic’, Polish Review, 11:1

(1966), pp. 1–37.

107 Ganzenmüller, ‘Das chemische Laboratorium’, p. 317.
108 Hotson, Alsted, p. 56.

31
and, as an old man, was the source of information for Girolamo Pinocci’s short
biography of Sendivogius.109
Alsted certainly continued to appreciate Michael Sendivogius as an alchemical
philosopher, as he both quotes him and lists him among his authorities in later
publications, including the Encyclopaedia. In Thesarus chronologiae, besides
referring again to the Four Monarchies, he also lists Sendivogius in Section XLVIII
‘Chronologia Alchymiae’ as the last in a long list of alchemists which began with
‘Hermes sive Mercurius Trismegistus’ who received his art from Noah. This
unfolding of the mysteries of alchemy is strangely reminiscent of the title-page of
Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae, which also starts with Hermes and ends
with Sendivogius, as if on a circular diagram.
The later history of Sendivogius’s millenarian prophecy, or Heliocantharus
Borealis, and its adaptation by Johann Heinrich Alsted, is still to be researched. The
scheme of the Four Monarchies related to the four cardinal points found a resonance
among Czech exiles through its adoption by such intellectuals as the astrologically
minded and erudite Simeon Partlicius of Špicbergk (c.1590–post 1640) or the famous
historian Pavel Skála of Zhoře (1583–c.1640).110 The prophecy of the Northern Lion
circulated throughout Europe was sometimes accompanied by extensive quotations
from both Alsted and Sendivogius to give it more authority, as for example in the
print of c.1630 by Friedrich Schönleben (d. c.1678), the mayor of Freiberg (Saxony),
appended to the funeral sermon on the death of his father, also Friedrich, by
Abraham Gensereiff.111 Much later, in 1680, in England, a collection of prophecies
edited by Ezerel Tonge was published in support of Charles II.112 It reprinted
Sendivogius’s prophecy in full, both in Latin and in the parallel English translation,

109 Karolina Targosz, Hieronim Pinocci. Studium z dziejów kultury naukowej w Polsce w XVII wieku

(Wroclaw, 1967), p. 79 and p. 112.

110 Vladimír Urbánek, Eschatologie, vědění a politika. Příspěvek k dějinám myšlení pobělohorského

exilu (České Budějovice, 2008), pp. 89–90, p. 94 and pp. 208–16, especially p. 212, and in the English
summary pp. 279–83.
111 Abraham Gensereiff, Christliche Leichpredigt, Bey dem Volckreichen Leichbegängnüs ... Friedrich

Schönlebens, Bürgermeisters zu Freybergk, Welcher ... 1622. den 26. Octobr. ... verschieden, Und
folgendens den 31. ... bestattet worden, Gehalten, durch M. Abraham Genßreffen, Pfarrern und
Superintendenten daselbst (Freyberg, 1622). Its publication is obviously antedated, as it quotes from
Alsted’s Thesaurus chronologiae of 1624 and also mentions the year 1630. The only known copy is in
Ratsschulbibliothek Zwickau.
112 E[zerel] T[onge], The Northern Star. The British Monarchy or The Northern [and] the Fourth

Universal Monarchy; Charles II, and his Successors, the Founders of the Northern, Last, Fourth, and
most Happy Monarchy. Being a Collection of many choice Ancient and Modern Prophecies (London,
1680). I am indebted to Vladimír Urbánek for identitifying the compiler.
32
and was prefaced with a curious conjecture that the Polish alchemist is waiting in
hiding to supply Charles II with immense riches:

Michael Sandivogius [!], that most excellent profound Philosopher and adept
Chymist, is by some thought to be still alive, and ready to assist with endless
Treasures, this Northern Monarch, when he shall declare himself, and enter on
his Work. He in his Treatise of Sulphur, Printed at Colon, 1616, now commonly
sold in Shops, hath these words of the New Northern Monarchy here inserted
[quotation and translation follow].

English alchemical circles, which held Sendivogius in utmost esteem,113 also

discussed his prophecy, as, for example, did John French (probably also the
translator of his writings) in the introduction to his book The art of distillation
(1651), in which he states ‘I am of the same mind with Sandivogius [!], that that
fourth Monarchy which is Northerne, is dawning’ and then includes an abridged
translation of Sendivogius’s text (omitted from the English edition of the previous
year). Like Maier and Alsted before him, he places Sendivogius at the end of the chain
of alchemical adepts, calling him ‘the last of known philosophers’.114
In the northern monarchy of Sweden, where the Midnight Lion prophecy
became one of the leading motifs in political propaganda, the prophecy propounded
by Sendivogius was also noticed, especially in the Rosicrucian circles. The alchemist
Johannes Franck (1590–1661), professor of pharmacology at Uppsala, published it
along with one on Elias Artista which he had attributed to Paracelsus in his
dissertation of 1645.115 He believed the new Northern Monarchy would materialise in
Sweden and calculated its beginning as 1658, when all the secrets of alchemy would
be revealed to everyone. Although he did not name the predicted monarch of the new
epoch, it is quite certain that he saw Queen Christina as the future empress, as in 1651
he dedicated to her the treatise expounding the same ideas in the form of a

113 Thomas Vaughan, John Evelyn, Thomas Henshaw, Robert Paston, George Starkey (Iraeneus
Philalethes?), Isaac Newton, and many others. See for example, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The
Foundation of Newton’s Alchemy or, The Hunting of the Green Lyon (Cambridge, 1975).
114 John French, The Art of Distillation or, A treatise of the choisest spagyricall preparations

performed by way of distillation (London, 1651), p. ¶4 r◦ and p. ¶2 r◦.

115 De principis constitutivis lapidis philosophici, theses hermeticae (Uppsala, 1645). See Åkerman,

Rose Cross over the Baltic, p. 60 and p. 140; eadem, ‘Sendivogius in Sweden: Johannes Franck’s
Colloquium with Mountaingods, 1651’, paper presented at the workshop Fringes of Alchemy in
Budapest, 2010, and awaiting publication. (I am indebted to Susanna Åkerman for allowing me to
consult the typescript.)
33
conversation between Mountain Gods and a philosopher Zamolxides.116 It was based
partially on Tractatus aureus, published by Benedict Figulus in Thesaurinella
Olympica (1608), which also contained his early translation of Sendivogius’s
Dialogus.
With the dawning of the age of Enlightenment, attitudes to non-Biblical
prophecies became more critical, and so the Belgian pastor and historian of libraries
Johann Lomeier (1636–1699) called such theories, specifically including that of
Sendivogius, ‘absurdities and phantoms’.117 But the less ‘enlightened’ continued to
study ancient prophecies. One of them was Johann Christian Nehring (1671–1736), a
theologian who first studied medicine under Georg Ernst Stahl and later, as a pastor
and school rector in Essen, published a number of books on the Sybilline oracles. He
also produced a heavily annotated edition of De palingenesia by Georg Franck von
Franckenau, FRS (1643–1704), a work which attempted to prove that plants and
animals can be revived after death (one of the less-known alchemical pursuits). In the
commentary to chapter 44, Nehring quoted the whole of Sendivogius’s prophecy to
show that the secrets of palingenesis would become known to all with the dawning of
the new age.118
It was, however, also the time when prophecies of similar type were revived in
Eastern Europe, where Russia looked back to its medieval tradition of Moscow having
become the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople.119 When Peter the Great
opened up Russia to Western European influences, his political propagandists linked
this tradition to Michael Sendivogius’s prophecy in order to support the creation of
the new Universal Monarchy – the Russian Empire.120 Thus, after less than a century,

116 Ett Lustigt och Liufligt Samtaal emillan the Förnembsta och Edelste Berg-Gudar och een
Högförfaren Philosopho Zamolxides benämnd: Om den Edle och Dyrbare Klenodien Lapide
philosophorum (Uppsala, 1651).
117 Johann Lomeier, Dierum genialium (Deventer, 1694), p. 102.
118 Georg Franck von Franckenau, De palingenesia sive resuscitatione artificiali plantarum, hominum

et animalium e suis cineribus (Halle, 1717), pp. 254–5.

119 Dimitri Stremooukhoff, ‘Moscow the Third Rome: Sources of the Doctrine’, Speculum, 28 (1953),

pp. 84–101; Cyril Toumanoff, ‘Moscow the Third Rome: Genesis and Significance of a Politico-
Religious Idea’, The Catholic Historical Review, 40 (1954), pp. 411–47; Marshall Poe, ‘Moscow, the
Third Rome: the Origins and Transformations of a “Pivotal Moment’’’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte
Osteuropas, 49 (2001), pp. 412–29.
120 Lorenzo de Zavala, Obras: el periodista y el traductor, ed. Manuel González Ramírez (Mexico City,

1966), p. 369, note 1. The information given in a footnote without references by the editor of Zavala’s
works. He was apparently unaware the text he quoted (in Latin) was from Sendivogius, as he does not
mention him in the introductory statement: ‘Desde que la profecia de que el Norte deberia, después de
algún tiempo, dominar al Mediodia calentó la cabeza de Pedro el Grande (como lo prueba su
testamento), no han dejado de dominar en el gabinete ruso las ideas de monarquia universal. La
profecia en cuestion está concebida en estes términos: [Latin text quotation follows]’.
34
the prophecy of ‘Heliocantharus Borealis’ was fulfilled with the establishment of the
Northern Empire in St Petersburg, but in a way certainly not anticipated by the
alchemical prophet himself.

Appendix

Three examples of textual dependence between the section Physica chemica in

Alsted’s Systema physicae harmonicae of 1612 and Physica harmonica of 1616
(transcribed from the latter and then collated with the former) and Sendivogius’s De
lapide philosophorum of 1604 (transcribed from the 1749 edition in Musaeum
hermeticum which is the same as in the original but with expanded abbreviations).

Sendivogius (1604, pp. 22–4; 1749, p. 557)
TRACTATUS SECUNDUS.
De Opertatione Naturae in nostro proposito &
spermate.
[...] Simili modo e centro terrae semen vel
sperma a quatuor elementis in centrum
projectum ad varia loca transit, & secundum loci
Naturam naturatur res: si pervenit ad locum
terrae & aquae purum fit res pura.
[...] Viri semen est semen nobile, & saltem ad
generationem hominis est creatum;
[...] Nam si, contra gravissimas Dei inhibitiones,
vir iniret vaccam, aut aliam bestiam, facile
conciperet bestia viri semen, quia Natura non est
nisi una; & tunc non nasceretur Homo, sed bestia
& abortus:
[...] Ita enim fit, si sperma intrat centrum
nascitur quod inde nasci debebat.
Alsted (1612, pp. 189–90; 1616, p. 234)
Cap. 5. Affectiones corporum naturalium.
[...] Semen verbi gratia elementorum ad varia
transit loca, & secundum loci naturam naturatur
res ipsa. Si pervenit ad locum purum, ipsa res fit
pura.
Sic si semen viri deferatur in matricem mulieris
bene dispositam, nascitur homo.
At si vir indeat contra legem naturae & Dei,
bestiam, nascitur monstrum:
quia sperma non intrat centrum suum.

35
Sendivogius (1604, pp. 30–5; 1749, pp. 560–2) Alsted (1612, pp. 210–1; 1616, pp. 253–4)
TRACTATUS QUARTUS Cap. 13. Metalla.
Quomodo metalla in terrae visceribus Mineralia majora sunt metalla, quorum
generantur. considerabimus principia, seu generationem, &
distinctionem.
Producuntur metalla hoc modo: Generatio metallorum sic habet.
postquam quatuor Elementa virtutes suas Posteaquam quatuor elementa virtutes suas
projecerunt in terrae centrum, Archaeus projiciunt in centrum terrae, archaeus distillando
distillando sublimat calore motus perpetui in sublimat eas calore motus perpetui in terrae
terrae superficiem: Est enim terra porosa, & superficiem. Est enim terra porosa, & ventus
ventus stillando per poros terrae resolvitur in stillando per poros terrae resolvitur in aquam, ex
aquam, ex qua res nascuntur omnes. qua res nascuntur omnes in terra.

[...] Non prima, sed secunda tantum quaeratur Ea propter vapor humidus est materia &
materia metallorum, & vegetabilium. Haec est prima
materia.
[...] sic locorum varietate res etiam proveniunt & Iste vapor in varia defertur loca, adeoque pro
nascuntur variae. [...] locorum varietate res etiam proveniunt variae.
Quando enim ex terrae centro sublimatur vapor Quando enim ex terrae centro sublimatur vapor
ille, transit per loca vel frigida vel calida: Si igitur ille: transit per loca vel sicca, vel calida, per pura,
transit vapor per loca calida & pura, ubi pinguedo vel impura. Si transeat per loca calida & pura, ubi
sulphuris parietibus adhaeret vapor ille, quem pinguedo sulphuris est, sese adjungit vapor ille
Philosophi Mercurium Philosophorum dixerunt, pinguedini, id est, Mercurius purus cum sulphure
accommodat se & jungitur illi pinguedini, quam puro miscetur. Sulphur Mercurium illum secum
postea secum sublimat; & tunc fit unctuositas, sublimat, & tunc fit unctuositas sive
relicto nomine vaporis accipit nomen oleaginositas, quae veniens continua
pinguedinis; quae postea veniens sublimando ad sublimatione ad loca varia, varia gignit metalla:
loca alia, quae jam vapor antecedens purgavit, ut si conjungatur cum terra subtili, pura, &
ubi est terra subtilis, pura: & humida, implet humida, generatur aurum: si vero veniat
poros ejus & jungitur illi; & sic fit Sol: si vero pinguedo illa ad loca impura & frigida, generatur
pinguendo illa venit ad loca impura, frigida, fit plumbum, & ita deinceps.
Saturnus: [...]
Quo enim magis depuratus locus est, eo Quo enim purior est locus, eo puriora producit
pulchriora reddit metalla: [...] Et haec est metalla. Haec est circulatio illa naturae, qua e
reiteratio, & circulatio Naturae; [...] Metalla vero mercurio & sulphure generantur metalla.
sic procreantur, longa destillatione purgatur
terra, postea accessu pinguedinis ea generantur:
[...]

36
Sendivogius (1604, pp. 75–8; 1749, pp. 574–5)
TRACTATUS XI.
De Praxi & confectione lapidis seu tincturae per
artem.
[...]Ignis naturae unus & idem cum ipso est:
sicuti enim Sol inter sphaeras Planetarum
centrum est, & ex hoc centro coeli deorsum calore
motu suo spargit, sic in centrro terrae Sol terrae
est, qui motu suo perpetuo calorem vel radios
sursum ad terrae superficiem pellit.
Is calor intrinsecus multo efficacior est hoc igne
elementali, sed temperatur terrena aqua, quae de
die in diem poros terrae penetrat illamque
refrigerat: [...]
In centro terrae est Sol centralis, qui motu suo vel
sui firmamenti dat calorem magnum, qui
extendit se usque ad terrae superficiem. Ille calor
causatur aerem hunc in modum: Aeris matrix
aqua est, quae parit filios suae naturae, sed
dissimiles; & multo subtiliores, nam ubi aquae
introitus est denegatus aer intrat: quando itaque
ille calor centralis, qui perpetuus est, agit, facit
distillare aquam et calefieri, & sic illa aqua vi
caloris vertitur in aerem, atque hoc pacto erumpit
ad superficiem terrae, quia se includi non patitur:
ubi postea refrixit resolvitur in aquam. [...]
Facias in olla fervere aquam, videbis igne lento
lentos vapores, & ventos: Igne vehementiori
apparebunt nebulae crassiores. Eodem plane
modo calor operatur centralis, subtilem aquam in
aerem elevat,
EPILOGUS (1604, p. 96; 1749, p. 581)
In superficie terrae radii radiis junguntur, et
producunt flores, et omnia.
TRACTATUS TERTIUS (1604, p. 27; 1749, p.
559)
et semper 8200. pars, etiam in ipso grano tritici;
et hoc aliter esse non potest: Nam non totum
Alsted (1612, pp. 212–4; 1616, pp. 256–7)
Cap. 15. Vegetabilia.
[...]
Sicut sol inter sphaeras planetarum est centrum,
& ex hoc coeli centro deorsum calor spargitur: sic
in centro terrae est Sol terrestis, qui motu suo
perpetuo calorem sursum ad terrae superficiem
pellit.
Is calor temperatur aqua terrena, quae de die in
diem poros terrae penetrat, illamque refrigerat.
Quum itaque in centro terrae sit sol centralis,
utique motu suo excitat calorem magnum, qui se
extendit usque ad superficiem terrae. Iste calor
causatur aerem, hunc in modum. Aeris matrix est
aqua. Aquam illam ubi contingit calor centralis,
aqua vi caloris vertitur in aerem, qui se includi
non patritur, ideoque erumpit ad terrae
superficiem: ubi, posteaquam refrixit, resolvitur
in aquam, vel subtilem, prout calor est intensus
vel remissus.
Si enim facias in olla fervere aquam, videbis igne
lento, lentos vapores & ventos, igne vehementiore
apparebunt nebulae crassiores: eodem modo
calor centralis operatur; subtilem aquam seu
aerem elevat.
Iste vapor in superficie terrae radiis astrorum
varie afficitur, & hinc vegetabilia, quae postea
producunt fructus,
in quibus 8200 pars habet rationem seminis.
Semen enim non est totum corpus, sed tantum
scintilla aliqua in corpore.
37
granum vel corpus vertitur in semen; sed tantum
est in corpore scintilla aliqua necessaria.

38