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Part One: Johann Moriaen: A Biographical Sketch
Chapter One: Servant of the Church

'Morian […] is admirably skilful but can bring nothing to perfection but is very inconstant and falls from one thing to another' - Kenelm Digby, cited in Ephemerides, 1654, HP 29/4/11A.

Origins and Upbringing

The minister, physician, natural philosopher and would-be alchemical adept Johann Moriaen was born in Nürnberg in the latter half of 1591 or shortly thereafter.[1] His father Frans was almost certainly a Dutch Calvinist exile of modest but comfortable means, and Johann grew up in the tight-knit society-within-a-society of the refugees, who were aliens both by nationality and religion.

In the late sixteenth century, the Free Imperial City of Nürnberg was a commercial centre strategically located at a nexus of major European trade routes. Long before the Reformation, it already had a substantial Dutch population purely on the strength of its economic connections with the Netherlands. This in itself recommended it as a possible destination to the Dutch refugees driven out of their homeland after the Netherlands, at this time hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, fell to Felipe II of Spain in 1556 and the new ruler set about extirpating Protestantism from his dominions. The Nürnberg authorities viewed this influx with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the vast majority of such exiles were Calvinists, and the Stadtrat or City Council, though humanistically inclined and averse to rigid dogmatism, did not wish to see the faith of the solidly Lutheran populace tainted with the new heresy, or the city a prey to partisan strife. Nor did it wish to provide the city's great Catholic neighbour Bavaria with an excuse for territorial aggression by overtly fostering a religion that had no legal existence within the Holy Roman Empire under the terms of the 1555 Treaty of Augsburg. On the other hand, the city's market-based economy, which had suffered from the political upheavals of mid-century, stood to benefit from an infusion of skilled artisans and craftsmen. It was precisely from this walk of life that the overwhelming majority of the Dutch refugees hailed - exile being for them, as it was not for unskilled labourers and peasants, a financially viable option. Like a number of other commercial centres in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,[2] Nürnberg discovered that a measure of religious toleration was good for business.

In 1569, as the notoriously bloody measures of Felipe's new lieutenant the Duke of Alva (appointed Governor 1567) led to a redoubling of the exodus from the Netherlands, the Nürnberg City Council moved from toleration to positive encouragement of the immigrants, or at least of certain selected ones, having spotted an opportunity to capitalise on the textile trade that was being driven out of the Netherlands along with Protestantism. It paid the travelling expenses of and found or even built accommodation for a hand-picked group of skilled workers in this field - dyers, weavers, stitchers and <4> embroiderers - who with their families numbered about forty. Far greater numbers of exiles who arrived of their own accord were also admitted. Many such immigrants acquired Nürnberg citizenship, a stipulation for this being that they should undertake not to set up any separate church or 'sect' within the Lutheran city, or make any attempt to convert or quarrel with any of the native populace. In other words, the city authorities wanted their technical expertise and commercial experience badly enough to be prepared to put up with their obnoxious opinions, provided they in turn were prepared to keep those opinions to themselves. Thus there was from the mid-sixteenth century a substantial and almost exclusively immigrant Calvinist population in Nürnberg, principally Dutch but including French Huguenots and English Puritans, unable (in principle at least) to make any public profession of their faith or conduct any communal worship, but accepting this as the price of shelter in a city where it was at least tacitly accepted that they practised it in private. Though there were periodical investigations of secret religious services being conducted within the Calvinist community, leading to the issuing of threats and admonishments, the authorities were decidedly luke-warm about taking real reprisals against such activity. It was not, however, until 1650, in the wake of the Peace of Westphalia, that a Reformed Church was officially recognised in Nürnberg.[3]

Among these immigrants was a braid-maker by the name of Hans Morianus, who acquired Nürnberg citizenship on 12 April 1581.[4] Two years later, this Morianus featured in a group of nine immigrant citizens and denizens who were summoned before the city court for having had their children baptised in Reformed churches of the Upper Palatinate instead of Lutheran ones in Nürnberg.[5] That they had done so testifies to the tenacity of their faith, since such a journey entailed three days' travelling (with, obviously, a young infant in tow). The City Council admonished its stiff-necked asylum-seekers to stop visiting churches outside the city boundaries, but appears as usual not to have imposed any actual penalties - or to have had much effect on their subsequent conduct.[6]

The surname Morian[us] is a highly unusual one, and it is beyond the bounds of plausible coincidence that this Hans Morianus should not have been related to Moriaen's father Frans and his wife Maria, née von Manten (which is probably a germanisation of van Manten).[7] While there is no documentary evidence that the family was Dutch, the Netherlands are far and away the likeliest place of origin for Calvinist immigrants to Nürnberg at this period. The assumption is effectively clinched by the fact that Moriaen consistently spelled his name in the Dutch manner, in preference to the much more Germanic 'Morian' favoured by almost everyone else at the time or since,[8] and that he was fluent in Dutch well before he settled in Amsterdam in 1638.[9] He was not baptised in Nürnberg, which suggests that the family persisted in the practice of sneaking out of Nürnberg to the Upper Palatinate to celebrate communion, weddings and baptisms according to the rites of their own faith.

The few other facts about Moriaen's family discernible from his letters can be quickly summarised. He had at least two sisters. One married the merchant Abraham de Bra, another member of the Nürnberg Dutch community.[10] De Bra left the city in 1633, probably for Amsterdam, and subsequently became a leading figure in the Dutch West India Company.[11] <5> Another sister married into the Abeele family - a transparently Dutch name.[12] Her husband may well have been related either to the Jan Abeels of Flanders who was an elder of the important Dutch Reformed Church of Austin Friars in London, from 1604 to 1611 or earlier, or the English-born John vanden Abeele who was an elder of Austin Friars from 1630-36, both of them merchants.[13] Moriaen also had at least one brother, whose daughter in 1649 or 50 married into the family of the renowned Frankfurt printer and engraver Matthias Merian.[14] Other members of his family lived in Craców, whence Catholic persecution drove them into exile in Danzig.[15]

The first surviving documentary evidence of Moriaen is his matriculation at Heidelberg University in 1611.[16] Later, Moriaen fondly recalled his student days at Heidelberg and his friendship there with Georg Vechner (later a collaborator and editor of Comenius), for whose accommodation he apparently paid.[17] His family evidently had the funds and the will to ensure he was well provided for. Since Moriaen subsequently became a Reformed minister, it is altogether likely that he studied theology, but the records yield no more than the date of matriculation, with no indication of how long he remained in Heidelberg or what degree, if any, he obtained.

Heidelberg, capital of the Palatinate, was a stronghold of Calvinism at this period. The Reformed faith had been imposed on the province in 1562 (and again, after a Lutheran interlude, in 1583), thus gaining for the cause the oldest university in Germany, and one of the most reputable. Though it initially remained academically conservative by comparison with the newly-founded Reformed academies such as Herborn (established 1584), the ethos was changing at the very moment of Moriaen's arrival. In particular, the logical and pedagogical ideas of Bartholomäus Keckermann (1571-1609) were (somewhat belatedly) meeting with an enthusiastic reception. Keckermann had set out to define what he called 'methodical Peripateticism', a synthesis of the traditional Aristotelian logical methodology with the newer and ostensibly anti-Aristotelian ideas of Pierre de la Ramée (Ramus) which had become a standby of Reformed education. Ramism, as Howard Hotson puts it, 'was an instrument adopted in order to achieve a Second Reformation', and Keckermann's achievement was a fusion of 'Ramist clarity with Peripatetic substance'.[18] Keckermann was a founder of the encyclopedic tradition that led through Alsted to Comenius and his notion of Pansophy, of which Moriaen was later to become a prominent champion and supporter. Though there is not a single mention in his surviving correspondence of either Ramus or Keckermann - or, for that matter, Aristotle - his university education took place at the same time Comenius was studying under Alsted in Herborn, just the time when the notions of universal method and encyclopedic knowledge were achieving their greatest vogue, especially in Reformed establishments.[19] It is even possible Moriaen first met Comenius during the latter's brief spell at Heidelberg in 1613, but it is by no means certain Moriaen was still there by then.

Under the Cross

There is no record of Moriaen at all for the next eight years, but at some point during this period he became a minister in Frankfurt am Main. The situation <6> there must have been familiar enough. Like Nürnberg, Frankfurt was an Imperial city under Lutheran control, cautiously and uneasily tolerating a substantial Calvinist minority of largely Dutch origin which was accorded no officially recognised church. Services and sacraments could be delivered only secretly, in private houses, just as they were in Nürnberg. As a boy, Moriaen would have attended such clandestine religious gatherings in his home city; as a young man, he conducted them in Frankfurt.

A new experience for him at this time, which may well have had an impact on his later thought and attitudes, will have been the Jewish ghetto. There was a sizeable Jewish community in Frankfurt, tolerated like the Reformed Christians because it was economically useful, but very much on sufferance and with far more severe circumscriptions. The Jews were subject to a strict curfew, being confined to their ghetto after dark and on Sundays, and at no time permitted to leave it without sporting the stigma of a prominent yellow circle sewn onto their clothing, or to assemble outside it in groups of more than two.[20] No comment whatsoever by Moriaen survives concerning his time in this city, but it is a reasonable conjecture that his experiences or observations in Frankfurt had a bearing on the keen interest he later displayed in Judaism, and the considerable sympathy he showed, by the Christian standards of the day, for its practitioners.

In 1619, at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War, he was summoned by his Church to the still less congenial surroundings of Cologne, one of the most staunchly and intransigently Roman Catholic enclaves of the entire Empire. The records of the German Reformed Church there (henceforth Protokolle) note that on 27 February 1619,

Since the Brothers have decided to summon a third minister, and one by the name of Johannes Moriaen has been suggested to us, who is prepared to be seen next week in Frankfurt, Brothers Wilhelm Engels and Johann Fassing are to arrange for the said Moriaen's preaching to be heard by the leading members of the church, that we may judge whether he might fruitfully serve this congregation.[21]

Apparently his preaching met with the approval of the church authorities, since two months later he was sent a written summons.[22] His decision to follow it was a brave one. For a Reformed minister to move from Frankfurt to Cologne in 1619 was to exchange, quite deliberately, the frying pan for the fire. The Nürnberg and Frankfurt authorities were prepared to turn a blind eye to Calvinism so long as its adherents maintained a reasonable level of discretion. Cologne wanted no truck with any form of Protestantism at all.

At the time of the first wave of Protestant emigration from the Netherlands in the mid-sixteenth century, Cologne had offered numerous attractions to the exiles: many Dutch traders had business connections there, it was reasonably close to the Netherlands, and it was known for tolerance and hospitality. The Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation soon changed this. The Lutheran and the three rather larger Reformed Churches (German, Dutch and Walloon) found themselves under constant surveillance and at risk of unwelcome attention from the authorities or more orthodox citizens. As Rudolf Löhr, the first modern editor of the Protokolle, sums the record up:

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From the first onslaught of 1566/1568 until 1627, besides the ambushes of their services reported or merely implied [in the records], the Evangelicals had to endure an unbroken chain of trials, fines, imprisonments and banishments, house searches and house closures.[23]

The full congregation never met at any one time, and from October 1619 on no more than two of the three German ministers ever attended consistorial meetings together.[24] When a service was to be held, the ministers decided which of their flock to call to it, by turns and according to the standard of their behaviour, and secret messages were conveyed to those summoned, informing them of the time and place. Whenever Catholic processions, such as the Corpus Christi day parade, were due to take place, the ministers went discreetly from house to house among their congregation exhorting them to keep well clear of the 'idolatrous carnival' ('abgöttliche Götzendracht'). When the Reformed Churches, by contrast, decided on a day of prayer and fasting - a standard Protestant strategy for appeasing the wrath of God which was employed about once every three or four months - the same procedure was repeated, firstly to let people know it was happening and secondly to encourage them to observe it.

The elders of the church occupied their position only for a year at a time, after which new elders were elected. This tended to be a cyclical process, former elders being regularly proposed for re-election after four or five years. The ministers never appeared publicly in clerical dress. The locations of the services and even the days on which they were held were frequently changed. The watchword was discretion, and the foremost concern of all members of the church was to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Despite such conditions, the role of Reformed minister in Cologne may well, in early 1619, have presented brighter prospects to a devout believer in the imminent and ultimate triumph of the Protestant cause than can easily be appreciated with the handicap of hindsight. Bohemia was making its stand against domination by the Catholic Habsburgs and it was fondly supposed by many Protestants that its elected champion, Friedrich V of the Palatinate, would be supported by the might of England under his father-in-law James I. The abundant prophecies of the impending downfall of Antichrist seemed to be borne out by this massive challenge to Catholic domination within the Holy Roman Empire. Moriaen had certainly read the Fama and Confessio of the Rosicrucians,[25] the one announcing an imminent rebirth of the Evangelical church, the other predicting with positively sadistic glee the downfall of Rome. He also saw the manuscript of the first two parts of Lux in tenebris (Light in Darkness), the visions of Christina Poniatowska and Christoph Kotter, translated into Latin by Comenius, foretelling the restoration of Elector Friedrich and the triumph of Protestantism. That is not of course to say that he uncritically believed them, and his own much later recollection was that he approached Lux in tenebris at least with considerable scepticism.[26] But he can hardly have been unaffected by the emotional and intellectual climate that produced such works, distinctly and deliberately reminiscent of the vengeful optimism and dogged faith of the early Christian Church - another oppressed dissident minority - as expressed in Revelation.

Whether Moriaen shared it or not, the illusion did not last long. The summer of 1620 saw Friedrich's lands in the Palatinate overrun by forces <8> allied to the Emperor, and in November his army in Bohemia was routed by Bavarian-led troops at the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague. Friedrich and his family fled to the Netherlands, and in 1623 his Electorate was transferred to the Catholic Maximilian of Bavaria. It had rapidly become apparent that the English crown had no intention of engaging for one side or the other, and the position of Protestants in such Catholic strongholds as Cologne, where the Counter-Reformation had in any case already been in full swing for some decades, became more difficult and dangerous than ever. Far from spearheading a Third Reformation, Moriaen and his colleagues can at best have found themselves struggling to sustain the faith of a beleaguered congregation forced to worship in secret and displaying considerable courage in doing so at all. The one thing to be said for Cologne, from a Protestant point of view, was that unlike so much of Germany it avoided becoming a battleground, but in that respect it was a haven securely in hostile hands. It was not until 1802 that public Evangelical worship became possible in the city.[27] That Moriaen stuck to this singularly thankless and dangerous post for a full eight years bespeaks considerable courage and tenacity of purpose on his part.

The contemporary Protokolle give some impression of what Moriaen's life must have been like for these eight years. Laconic but vivid, they are records of great value not only for their many historical and biographical details but also for sheer human interest: and they incidentally refute the stereotypical image of Calvinists as humourless. Moriaen's name appears dozens of times over the period of his ministry. In the early years especially, the keepers of the Protokolle clearly set out to convey as great a sense of normality as possible, assiduously noting the routine tasks assigned to the church's servants, tasks which would have been the stock-in-trade of a Reformed minister in any location, Geneva as much as Cologne. Moriaen oversaw accounts and dealt with church correspondence; he received and passed on pleas for charitable assistance, both from distressed individuals and other Reformed communities; he catechised aspiring members of the congregation and assessed their suitability in terms of their behaviour and their familiarity with the principles of religion. He frequently attended the consistorial meetings of the three Reformed Churches which took place every few months, and at which common policies were agreed on, the division of labour between the three sister churches allotted and disagreements discussed. Above all, he carried out that most central of a Reformed minister's duties, the supervision of the morals of his flock.

Soon after joining the church, Moriaen was confronted with the rather surprising case of one Jeremias Mist, who wished to marry his late stepfather's widow. Moriaen was appointed to write to the Heidelberg theologian Scultetus for advice. The reply was, as the Protokolle drily note, that the proposal was found unacceptable 'in consideration of the fact that the said widow is his mother, or at least is believed to be so'.[28]

Most of the misdemeanours he was called on to admonish were more commonplace:

It has come to our notice that Johann Mosten, shortly after partaking of holy communion, overburdened himself with drink and thereupon, at <9> home, treated his wife in an unseemly fashion, offending the community of Christ. To be chastised for this by Brothers Jordan and Moriaen.[29]

One of the worst recidivists in this respect was a certain Matthias Kuiper. On 1 August 1624, Moriaen was appointed to help arrange a reconciliation between Kuiper and his wife, whose marital disputes had likewise been offending the community of Christ.[30] The following December, Kuiper complained that he was still not being called to the church services, only to be told the church was unconvinced by his explanation 'that he had only made advances to his former serving maid in order to test her piety.'[31] Some months later, being assured that he and his wife were now reconciled, Moriaen was again sent to tell Kuiper that he could return to the fold if he promised to remain sober.[32] But by 30 October the wheel had once more turned full circle:

Although Matthias Kuiper, on a high oath and with weighty words, on the one hand promised to mend his ways and on the other denied his faults, matters have turned out otherwise, in that he remains continually given to drinking, gambling and frivolity.[33]

Moriaen was again given the seemingly hopeless task of persuading the errant Kuiper back onto the paths of righteousness.

In the early years of his ministry, indeed, the concern expressed in the records about 'un-Christian' behaviour on the part of the congregation, such as drinking, swearing, gambling, quarrelling, fornicating and dancing, rather outweighs that about Catholic persecution. Dancing particularly concerned the German church, which appears to have been the most sternly puritanical of the three. A constant complaint in the records after consistorial meetings was that the Dutch and Walloon churches considered excommunication an excessive punishment for persistent dancing, and could not be persuaded to join the German in a united and uncompromising stance against such behaviour.

Another recurrent problem was the habit of the congregation of attending Catholic ceremonies and festivals, or, worse, sending their children to Catholic schools or tutors. Since there was no official or legal alternative, this is hardly surprising. Association with Catholics, however, was a matter of concern not only for its corrupting influence on the individual concerned, but for the danger it posed to the Reformed community as a whole, especially to those actually in Church service. When, for instance, the daughter of the woman appointed to summon catechists took up with a Papist, the Church was reluctantly obliged to dispense with the mother's services.[34] A careless or malicious word might let slip the identity of a minister or the location of a service, as when

It is reported that Christian Stoffgen, in the presence of a Popish woman, unseemingly gave out that he had been dealt with in unfriendly fashion by Herr Lauterbach, adding, 'that is how our Elders behave.' Brothers Johann and Schütgens to speak with him and chastise him according to their findings.[35]

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The result might be banishment from Cologne of one of the Church's servants, as happened to Johann Kray in 1623,[36] or the arrest of the owner of a house in which services were held. This befell Peter Gülich on 5 March 1627. Faced with the threat of a heavy fine or imprisonment unless he would reveal the names of at least some of the congregation, Gülich was on the point of capitulating, and the Church found itself obliged to spend 300 Imperials from its funds to bribe his release.[37] Children of course were particularly susceptible to Papist wiles, and were not admitted to services on the grounds that they were too young for their discretion to be relied on.[38]

In the course of his ministry, Moriaen formed a number of lasting friendships: many of the names that feature regularly in the Protokolle recur too in his later correspondence with Hartlib. Among the more respected members of what was in general a well-to-do congregation were the Pergens family. Long before Moriaen's arrival, one Jacob Pergens was Elder for a year (1604),[39] and Leonard Pergens was upbraided for the tiresome sin of dancing.[40] These are almost certainly older relations of the Jacob Pergens, Herr von Vosbergen, who later settled in Amsterdam and became a director of the West India Company, and is frequently mentioned in Moriaen's correspondence with the vague designation 'Vetter' (i.e. any male relation beyond the immediate family). His trading contacts would make him a useful channel for conveying parcels of books, minerals, medicines, etc. between England and the Netherlands. Another prominent family was the von Zeuels: Peter and Jacob appear as servants of the church during Moriaen's ministry, and before his arrival, Adam von Zeuel was an elder.[41] Moriaen would later marry this Adam von Zeuel's daughter Odilia. There is frequent mention of the Lauterbach family, who also appear later as relatives of Moriaen.[42] In the tight-knit Reformed community, intermarriage between the larger families was virtually inevitable, so it is hardly surprising that all these names occur in his later correspondence as relations, probably through his marriage to Odilia von Zeuel.

It was also in Cologne that Moriaen became associated with the large Kuffler family. Abraham Kuffler was Elder in 1622 and 1627,[43] and numerous other members of the family are mentioned as attending catechism, delivering their Glaubensbekenntnis (confession of [Calvinist] faith) and so forth. At the same time, another Abraham Kuffler of Cologne and his brother Johann Sibertus were in England. These two would later achieve considerable celebrity as inventors, and from the late 1640s onward the fate of Johann Sibertus in particular became inextricably linked with that of Moriaen.

Moriaen's own interest in technological development, particularly in the field of optics, was also established by this time. He is almost certainly the person referred to in a letter of December 1626 from Prince August of Anhalt to the natural philosopher and bibliophile Carl Widemann, mentioning a highly accomplished optician of Cologne with an assistant named Morian.[44] Among his accomplishments was the making of microscopes, albeit relatively basic ones.[45] There is no clue as to the identity of his employer, but he later told the story of a group of Cologne glassmakers who were forced to flee the city because their lenses proved so fragile that they tended to burst spontaneously.[46] The profession of glassmaker may have served as a cover for Moriaen's involvement with the clandestine Reformed Church.[47] There is no doubt, however, that his interest in the subject was genuine and profound, <11> and it remained with him for the rest of his life. His later activity as agent for the German telescope and microscope maker Johann Wiesel will be considered shortly. Moriaen expected more from his lenses, however, than mere magnification: he came to believe that by means of them sunlight itself could be concentrated into a material form and the 'universal spirit' or 'world soul' extracted from it.[48]

His future wife aside, the closest and most enduring relationships Moriaen established were with preachers of the other Reformed Churches. Justinus van Assche[49] served the Dutch Church in Frankfurt and Cologne simultaneously from October 1622 (some three years after Moriaen's arrival in Cologne) till June 1627 (almost exactly the same time Moriaen left). Hartlib's great friend Dury was with the Walloon Church in Cologne from 1624 to 26,[50] and was replaced by Pierre Serrurier, or Petrus Serrarius as he is better known, who stayed until 1628.[51] All three were noted for their irenical leanings, and were accused of unorthodoxy by their more doctrinaire co-religionists.

Early in 1624, van Assche wrote to his friends and future brothers-in-law Jacob and Isaac Beeckman expressing concern about the heterodox opinions of a friend in Cologne. Van Assche's letter is lost, and is known only through Jacob Beeckman's reply, in which the staunchly Reformed Beeckman urged him to keep his distance from such dubious ideas.[52] Neither the friend's name nor the unorthodoxy in question is specified. Since the exchange pre-dates the arrival of either Dury or Serrarius in Cologne, van der Wall conjectures that it may refer to Moriaen.[53] This is certainly feasible, though as she stresses herself there is no conclusive proof. As things turned out, however, Moriaen was the only one of the four friends not to become embroiled in public doctrinal disputes.

Van Assche was summoned in 1626 to a new post in Veere, but refused to sign the rigid Glaubensbekenntnis, an affirmation of sound doctrinal Calvinism drawn up at the Synod of Dordrecht (Dort). It is a sign of how much laxer his church was than Moriaen's that he had presumably not been required to do so before. This led not only to the appointment's not being ratified but to van Assche's excommunication - an excommunication which, it appears from Moriaen's correspondence, was still in force thirteen years later.[54] Serrarius, who would later become one of the most spectacularly non-conformist figures of his day, was also removed from his post for unorthodoxy. The precise grounds are unclear, but van der Wall, who is the chief authority on this intriguing character, suggests that Serrarius may have rejected the idea of Christ's having assumed human nature.[55]

As for Dury, he spent his life engendering public controversies precisely by dint of his tireless efforts to bring all controversy to an end. Since the studies of Turnbull and Webster established (quite rightly) the centrality of Dury's role in Hartlib's vision of a Great Instauration, it has been all too easy to overlook the fact that this was very much Hartlib's personal opinion, and that to many of his contemporaries Dury's close involvement with his projects seriously compromised their credibility. When the mystic and alchemist Johannes Tanckmar was accused by the Church authorities in Lübeck of promoting unorthodoxy, his friendship with Dury was cited in evidence against him.[56] In November 1639, van Assche objected, through Moriaen, to a proposed publication of his correspondence with Dury about scriptural <12> analysis, 'for Justinus himself has been removed from the ministry for this reason [public association with ideas deemed unorthodox] and is still excluded from communion'.[57] Though one reason cited is that van Assche's known unorthodoxy might be seen to taint Dury's endeavours, the letter makes it plain that van Assche was at least equally worried about the converse: that making his association with Dury public would bring him into greater disrepute. Bringing the work out anonymously would solve nothing, he protested, for Dury's style was so distinctive it would immediately be recognised. If his ideas were to be made public - to which he had no objection - it should be in a separate edition from Dury's.

It is highly probable, though there is no firm evidence, that Moriaen's friendship with another of Hartlib's closest associates, Theodore Haak, also dates from this period.[58] Haak was a translator from the Palatinate, who later settled in England and became a diplomat in the service of Cromwell and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He played a leading role in the organisation of charitable collections for the Palatine refugees, in the promotion of the work of Comenius, and in furthering experimental philosophy through the scientific club known as the '1645 group', including John Wilkins and John Wallis, and of which Haak was certainly a member and may have been the instigator.[59] After studying at Cambridge, Haak spent a year or two in Cologne from the summer of 1626, where he 'joined a group of fellow Protestants and took a regular part in the secret religious meetings which they were holding in a private house.'[60] That is to say, he practised his religion: there was no other sort of Protestant meeting in Cologne. Though there is no mention of Haak in the Protokolle, it would be surprising if he and Moriaen did not come into contact in such an environment. Indeed, Haak was in all likelihood part of the audience for Moriaen's sermons.

As time went on, the veneer of ordinariness affected by the Church records became perceptibly thinner. At the beginning of Moriaen's period of service, the days of fasting and atonement were regularly instituted with the formulaic remark that penitence was particularly necessary 'in these fast-changing and dangerous times' ('in diesen geschwinden gefährlichen Zeiten'). By the end of 1625, this had turned to 'on account of great immediate peril and fearsome wrath of God'.[61] The steady trickle of ministers and others in the church's employ requesting demission because they were becoming too well known swells with the passing of time, as does the number detected by the authorities and imprisoned or banished from the city. The elder Jacob Phinor, when he died in 1624, was not replaced due to a lack of suitable candidates - a lack which was expected to become more serious with the passing of time.[62] A recurrent cause of concern was the question of how to reconcile a clean conscience with interrogation under oath if the worst came to the worst. This was discussed on 4 May 1623, but no one could come up with a better idea than that already in practice, that anyone put in such a position should consider him or herself automatically released from the Church and hence able to say honestly that he or she had nothing to do with it.[63] This perhaps proved inadequate to cope with the formula 'are you now or have you ever been', for the same question was raised again, in the 'times now more difficult and dangerous than ever' ('jetzt überaus schwehrlicher und gefährlicher Zeit'), on 26 August 1626, and brothers 'Henricus and Morian' were appointed to search the church records diligently for a previous <13> ruling on the matter that might supply a better solution.[64] (The result of their deliberations is not recorded.) The resolute tone of the earlier entries, and their frequent sardonic humour, gradually give way to a gathering sense of impotent frustration, exemplified by the decision on 1 April 1627:

In consideration of the great danger and distress increasing here more and more as time goes on, the assembled Brothers are to consider keenly, invoking divine aid, the safest and surest means by which we may conduct our holy worship as diligently as possible, and yet still avoid danger.[65]

By this juncture, Moriaen, who had already stuck to his post a good deal longer than the majority of ministers found possible, had applied to join the swelling exodus. He was released from his duties 'on account of great and most urgent peril' ('aus erheblicher und hochdringender Not') on 29 February 1627 - but with the proviso that he should continue to display his goodwill to the church as opportunity arose.[66] Quite what was meant by this is not altogether clear, but it was evidently more than a rhetorical turn of phrase and involved some sort of practical commitment, since on 1 April he pressed again for his official demission, the other brothers agreeing to refer the matter to their superiors. It was not until 26 May that he was finally, and reluctantly, released:

Concerning the matter of Brother J, the assembled Brothers have agreed unanimously, in view of his most urgent peril, that although we are most loth to forego his services, we will nonetheless grant his request.[67]

Soon after renouncing his ministry at Cologne, Moriaen returned to his birthplace, Nürnberg, and became involved in setting up and administering charitable collections for the Reformed ministers and teachers, and their families, driven out of the Upper Palatinate by the Bavarian invasion. Nürnberg became the foremost resort of such refugees and the administrative centre for the distribution of funds raised by the international relief effort.[68] Moriaen was, by his own later account, a major player in this for over five years, evidently meaning mid or late 1627 to early 1633.[69]

This charitable collection for exiled Protestant preachers and teachers, who in many cases were literally facing starvation, had been first launched in 1626 as a private enterprise by Johannes Cüner, a former Reformed preacher of Amberg who had himself taken refuge in Nürnberg. Amberg was a town of the Upper Palatinate which had been among those to which Reformed Nürnbergers such as Hans Morianus resorted for baptisms and communion. From the start, however, it was an international operation, applying for and receiving subsidies from sister churches in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and England. Various members of the Nürnberg Dutch community soon became involved in the project. Among the merchants who acted as clearing agents in this business, by accepting in their own names the foreign currency donations received and passing on the equivalent amount in Nürnberg guilders to the overseers of the collection, was Moriaen's brother-in-law Abraham de Bra, alongside Jermias Calandrin and Johann Kendrich, two other names that occur, albeit only in passing, in Moriaen's later correspondence.

<14>

On 30 March 1627, the deposed Elector Palatine, Friedrich V, issued a 'royal' decree from his exile in The Hague, 'officially' sanctioning the programme. De Bra, Calandrin and Kendrich all appear shortly after this, no longer as middle-men, but as organisers and overseers of the collection, and were joined in this capacity, according to Neidiger, by the Dutch Nürnberger 'Johann Moriau'. This is an evident (and easily-made) mistranscription of 'Morian'.[70]

As far as the City Council was concerned, of course, the enterprise had no official character whatsoever, and the official approbation of Friedrich, if they knew about it at all, could only serve to make the whole business highly suspect. In 1628, the Council organised an investigation of it. This declared the collection not only illegal but apt to awaken suspicion that Nürnberg was secretly promoting Calvinism, a charge likely to lead to dire reprisals from the Emperor, or to provide Maximilian of Bavaria with an excuse for occupying the city. Charity toward exiles was all well and good (and was, indeed, being organised by the Council itself on a smaller scale), but only under the Council's own aegis. The Council duly admonished the organisers and threatened them with banishment. As had earlier been the case with baptisms and weddings outside Nürnberg or secret Calvinist services within it, however, this seems to have been more a matter of form than a genuine attempt to put a stop to the collection. The 'Dutch' administrators, presumably including Moriaen, discreetly handed their responsibilities over, in name at least, to four ministers and officials from the Palatinate, but by 1631 had as quietly taken them up again. The Council's main concern, it would seem, was to be able to demonstrate if necessary that it was not secretly in league with Friedrich V or actively condoning heresy. It was more important to have these statutes noted in the records than actually to implement them. All it really wanted from the Calvinists was discretion. The one person involved who actually was officially banished from the city, Dr Johann Jakob Heber, himself a Palatine exile and principal overseer of the distribution of funds, did not in fact leave.[71] The collection continued to function until after the end of the war, finally being wound up in 1650. In 1637, indeed, it was given de facto recognition when the Council referred an application from a Palatine serving maid for treatment in a Nürnberg charity hospital to 'the Palatine exiles, they being the patient's countryfolk' ('den pfälzischen Exulanten, als dieser Patientin Landsleuten') and 'the collection and its organisers' ('der Collecta und dero Verwaltern').[72] After what Moriaen had been accustomed to in Cologne, this hardly counted as persecution.

Among the foremost contributors during Moriaen's time as an administrator of the collection was the Dutch-Swedish arms and mining magnate Louis (or Lodewijk) de Geer.[73] As a manufacturer and trader of arms, de Geer had done spectacularly well out of the Thirty Years War, but (to Protestant eyes at least) his philanthropy was even more fabulous than his wealth. Throughout his career, he set ten per cent of his profits aside for charitable causes. This was in fact quite normal behaviour for a devout Calvinist such as he was, but ten per cent of de Geer's annual profit was more than most people could dream of earning in a lifetime. As Moriaen later told Hartlib, de Geer contributed over 20,000 Imperials (about £3,500-£4,000) to the collection, which if Moriaen was not exaggerating is indeed an extraordinary sum for a personal donation.[74] Some years later, de Geer would again feature prominently in Moriaen's life as a patron of Comenius, while his son Laurens would be a benefactor both to Comenius and to Moriaen himself.[75]

But of all the contributions that reached Nürnberg from the various foreign churches and individuals Moriaen and his colleagues had appealed to, the most substantial was that raised by the two Royal Collections in England launched in 1628 and 1631 and administered by the Dutch Reformed church at Austin Friars. Hartlib and (especially) Haak were involved in organising these.[76] Despite the obstruction of William Laud, Bishop of London, who was not best pleased to see his sovereign sanctioning what he saw as support for the cause of international Calvinism, the two collections raised close to £10,000 for the relief effort (there was a third Royal Collection in 1635 but Laud, by then Archbishop of Canterbury, kept a much tighter rein on this).[77] Though there is no firm evidence, it seems likely that if Moriaen and Hartlib were not already known to each other, they became so through their involvement in this charitable cause.

<15>

Mystics and Utopists

The cultural and confessional atmosphere of Nürnberg had changed somewhat since Moriaen's childhood. It was still a Free Imperial City and still officially Lutheran, but was becoming known, as were Hamburg, Frankfurt, Lübeck, Rostock and Bremen, as a centre for religious independents. This was perhaps the result of the willingness these free Lutheran cities had earlier shown to admit refugees of various Evangelical hues.

Luther's most revolutionary achievement had been, perhaps, the bringing of the Bible to the people, that they might no longer be duped by the casuistical interpretations set on it by Rome. A perennial source of embarrassment to learned Lutherans in positions of authority, both ecclesiastical and secular, was that instead of uniting joyously in the pure and simple faith that had thus been revealed to them, considerable numbers of the people proceeded to put their own novel interpretations on the sacred texts, and to argue that the Lutheran theologians who sought to suppress their views were indulging in quite as much casuistry and restraint of conscience as the Romanists they had taken over from. In fact, the Lutheran cities were on the whole a great deal milder in their treatment of non-conformists than either Catholic or Calvinist territories, which is the main reason they attracted so many of them.

There are, for obvious reasons, considerable difficulties in establishing the nature and membership of such independent circles, if indeed they can be deemed to have had a sufficiently formalised existence for words such as 'circle' and 'membership' to be applicable to them at all. It is clear, however, that in the Nürnberg of the late 1620s and early 1630s, there were considerable numbers among the populace prepared openly to refuse attendance at Lutheran services. These non-conformists came for the most part from the milieu of the traders and artisans.[78] Many of them must have been children or grandchildren of the Reformed immigrants among whom Moriaen's parents had featured towards the end of the previous century, grown a little more confident than their forebears had been of their right to assert an independent religious identity, but also less committed than those forebears to the orthodoxies of Calvinism.

These Evangelical independents, representing a very broad spectrum of views, and united more by their shared rejection of both Lutheran and Calvinist confessionalisation than by any doctrinal unanimity, are generally lumped together by modern historians under the faute de mieux labels 'spiritualist', 'separatist' or (in German) 'Schwärmer'. This last, much like the English 'enthusiast', was a catch-all derogatory term applied promiscuously at the time to the uncategorisably unorthodox. Other contemporary expressions applied in similarly arbitrary fashion were 'Schwenckfeldian', 'Boehmenist' and 'Weigelian', after the mystic writers Caspar Schwenckfeld, Jacob Boehme and Valentin Weigel. Though all these writers had their genuine adherents among the independents, these terms were on the whole used loosely and arbitrarily, often without any clear idea of the doctrines they ostensibly designated.

The use of the term 'Schwärmer' for dangerously independent religious thinkers seems to have originated with Luther himself, reflecting his own <16> alarm at some of the forces he had helped unleash. The danger they posed to the establishment was in most cases more perceived than real. A few, such as Ludwig Gifftheil and his disciple Johann Friedrich Münster, preached armed insurrection in the name of the Messiah, but they found few followers.[79] The majority were more concerned with an internalised, pietistic spiritualism, and were quite content to leave the established church to its own devices so long as it extended the same courtesy to them. By definition individualistic, most rejected the very notion of sects and schools. In the case of Nürnberg, there can be no knowing what passed in the private gatherings which undoubtedly took place, but of which no detailed record has survived. However, there is no evidence to suggest that these were more than occasions to discuss and celebrate a doctrinally independent faith, or that the participants either did or desired to challenge the officially established religion of the city.

This was the milieu to which Moriaen returned in (probably) 1627. While such associations provide no conclusive proof of Moriaen's own opinions and still less of his activities, a consistent picture emerges of a man much involved with the doings and writings of these so-called 'enthusiasts' or 'Schwärmer', whose beliefs varied widely on points of detail, but who were generally agreed on the importance of a personal understanding of and relationship with God and the expression and propagation of that faith through practical works of charity and the dissemination of inspirational literature.

It is from Nürnberg that his first surviving letter is addressed: it is to Dury, and dated 22 January 1633.[80] It is a short note in Latin, mainly concerned with an exchange of literature: Moriaen had been enquiring on Dury's behalf after a number of works by the 'spiritualists' Sebastian Franck, Christian Endfelder and Daniel Friedrich, and specified Caspar Warnle as a contact through whom he had tried to obtain them. This Warnle (Werlin, Wörnlein) came from one of the more prominently unconfessionalised Nürnberg families. In January 1648, a church commission considered what to do with a number of 'Weigelians' including Warnle's widow, and recommended banishment, though it is not clear to what extent this advice was acted on.[81]

Later the same year, Moriaen wrote again to Dury that his sister's daughter had married Peter Neefen, adding that Neefen was no stranger to Dury.[82] Neefen, together with Warnle and a few others, belonged to the inner circle of friends of Nikolaus Pfaff, who has been described as the spiritual leader of the Nürnberg non-conformists.[83] Neefen was also particularly close to the radical mystic J.F. Münster, who even hoped that in the event of his wife's death, Neefen would undertake the care and upbringing of his children.[84]

Moriaen's interest in rare and unorthodox mystic literature surfaces again in a letter to van Assche of 1634, in which he expressed hopes of obtaining a copy of Paul Felgenhauer's Monarchen-Spiegel (Mirror of Monarchs) (1633-5). In this work, Felgenhauer accused the rulers of the world of neglecting the higher authorities of Christ and God, and of staining their hands with the blood of innocents. He contrasted the 'empire of the Devil, the Beast and the tyrants of this world' with the reign of Christ in the world to come (the Millennium) and finally with the reign of God in a new incarnation of this world at the end of time.[85] Since the attack on temporal authorities included explicit denunciation <17> of the Emperor Ferdinand, the work later brought down the accusation of lèse-majesté against Felgenhauer.[86] Whether Moriaen was trying to acquire it from or for van Assche is not clear, but it is evident both men were avid readers and collectors of such books.[87]

However loosely the name of Jacob Boehme may have been invoked by the denouncers of non-conformity, there is no doubt that this mystic visionary genuinely was a source of inspiration for many of the less orthodox German thinkers of the period, as for some of the radical religious movements that sprang up during the political upheavals in England in the 1640s.[88] Boehme (1575-1624), a cobbler by trade and largely self-educated, preached an intensely personal understanding of God and an almost boundless tolerance to the rest of humanity. His writing is distinguished by an incantatory, Biblically inspired and resolutely anti-intellectual lyricism, and by a passionate and transparently sincere desire to communicate a vision individualistic to the point of incommunicability. The themes that recur above all in his work are dissolution of the individual in spiritual communion with the divine, and an empathy not only with all other human beings but the whole of Creation, all of which he maintained was animated by the same divine spirit. It is in connection with Boehme's works, and with the underground literary contacts of Caspar Warnle, that in 1634 Moriaen makes his first appearance in Hartlib's day-book, the Ephemerides. Moriaen had recommended Warnle as 'one that could give a Catalogue of all rare books'. The entry goes on to note that the Hamburg patrician Joachim Morsius was a man through whom all the works of Boehme could be obtained, by means of Moriaen.[89]

Of all the many admirers and disseminators of Boehme active in Germany at the period, this Joachim Morsius was among the most enthusiastic (in both senses of the word). How close Moriaen's relationship with him was at this date it is impossible to say. There is no mention of Morsius in any surviving writings by Moriaen. However, there is one surviving mention of Moriaen by Morsius, and since it occurs in a document of some significance and celebrity, a fairly full account of Morsius is necessary to place it in context.[90]

Morsius (1593-1643) was a scholar of some renown, who devoted a great deal of time and energy to attempting to locate and join the Rosicrucians after the publication of their two manifestos, Fama and Confessio, in 1614 and 1615.[91] In 1616, when he was briefly University librarian at Rostock, an open letter was published urging the entire Rostock theological faculty to join the Fraternity. Morsius's authorship is not proven, but he is certainly a candidate.[92] Another open letter, addressed to the Rosicrucians themselves and applying for admission, from one 'Anastasius Philaretus Cosmopolita' of 'Philadelphia' and including quite a detailed description of the author, is almost certainly by Morsius.[93]

Though he never did receive a reply from the Rosicrucians, Morsius's belief in them and taste for literature that blended mysticism and utopianism never abated. In later years, he found himself in repeated trouble with the authorities of Lübeck and Hamburg for his persistent dissemination of 'enthusiastic' literature such as Boehme's Weg zu Christo (Way to Christ), Felgenhauer's Geheimnis vom Tempel des Herrn (Secret of the Lord's Temple) and (in particular) Christoph Andreas Raselius's Trew-Hertzige Buß Posaune (True-Hearted Trumpet of Repentance) (s.l., 1632), a vehement and decidedly subversive anti-war tract, which accused the German rulers of all denominations, whether Catholic or Protestant (but especially the latter), of squandering the lives and welfare of their subjects on costly and pointless <18> conflicts stirred up only by their own greed, arrogance and prejudices. Besides distributing such literature, Morsius further offended through his association with various suspect figures including Moriaen's friends Dury and Johann Tanckmar.

As well as attracting unfavourable attention from the ecclesiastical authorities, Morsius also found himself in regular trouble with the secular, at the instigation of his own family. This was due to his refusal to adhere to the terms of the pension inherited from his brother Hans at the latter's death in 1629, which were that he should live an 'orderly' life, adopt a 'godfearing' profession,[94] and take back the wife he had left at some time before 1617, claiming she had insulted him.[95]

Morsius of course completely ignored all these stipulations and persisted in demanding his money. After protracted legal wrangling, he was finally committed to the Hamburg lunatic asylum in 1636, where he remained for four years. Whether he really was, in the modern sense of the term, clinically insane, it is now obviously impossible to determine. But it should be said that the Hamburg authorities were in general distinguished, by the standards of the day, by their tolerance and leniency towards the unorthodox, preferring to admonish or at worst banish troublemakers rather than incarcerate them. The 'letter of protest' ('Protestschrift') Morsius published in his own defence in 1634 is a work of quite exceptional incoherence which to say the least provides scant evidence of mental stability.[96]

He was released from the asylum in 1640 after intervention on his behalf by King Christian of Denmark. Three years later, he wrote, apparently out of the blue, to his erstwhile teacher at Rostock University, Joachim Jungius.[97] Jungius, by this time Rector of the Hamburg Gymnasium and a generally respected though sometimes controversial figure in the scientific and educational establishment, had in 1622 founded a short-lived and decidedly secretive scientific research association in Rostock going by the exotic name of 'Societas Ereunetica vel Zetetica'.[98] This group, like just about any private organisation in Germany at this period, had attracted suspicions of Rosicrucianism, and it was even suggested that Jungius was himself the author of the Rosicrucian manifestos.[99] This was enough to make Morsius assume Jungius took the liveliest interest in such matters, and the letter is given over almost entirely to discussion of the Rosicrucians and other secret societies, and to the literature relating to them that Morsius had in his possession. He was particularly keen to know whether Jungius's friend Adolf Tassius had obtained

the third part of the Dextera amoris porrecta [Right Hand of Love Offered] and of the Imago Societatis Evangelicæ [Model of an Evangelical Society], that is, the Golden Themis of the laws of that society, and the Antilian laws, or other details of this society or its members.[100]

This is typical of Morsius's jumbled thinking. The first two works in question, the titles of both which he slightly misquotes, are the Societatis Christianæ imago (Model of a Christian Society) and Christiani amoris dextera porrecta (The Right Hand of Christian Love Offered) (both Tübingen, 1620) of Johann Valentin Andreæ, a Lutheran preacher and acknowledged influence on Comenius, author of the Utopian novel Christianopolis (1619) and a fervent promoter of model Christian societies.[101] These two companion <19> pieces constitute a description of (or a proposal for) a loose association of pious spirits dedicating themselves to Christian learning, mutual moral and practical support and charitable works.[102] The two works were subsequently to take on a life of their own when Hartlib, unbeknownst to Andreæ, had them translated into English by John Hall, and used them to promote his own very different visions of Christian assemblies or 'correspondencies'.[103] The Themis aurea (Golden Themis, 1618) which Morsius took for their 'third part' (although it was published before them) is a quite distinct work by the mystic and alchemist Michael Maier. Maier, a nobleman of the Palatinate, certainly was involved in some sort of Rosicrucian society in 1611, though whether this was the same group that produced the famous manifestos is another matter.[104] His Themis aurea does indeed purport to expound the structure and laws of the Rosicrucians, though he explicitly disavows membership of the group and in fact does little more than rehash what had already been written of such matters in the Fama.[105] Moreover, Andreæ repeatedly insisted that insofar as his notion of a Christian Society had anything at all to do with the Rosicrucians, it was an attempt to harness the impulses behind the heady fantasies of the Fama and Confessio and redirect them towards a serious, sober and practicable scheme. The 'leges Antilianas' ('Antilian laws')[106] are the statutes of yet another society, 'Antilia', which was operative in Nürnberg in the 1620s.[107] Hartlib was associated with this, and Andreæ was aware of it, though again he distinguished clearly and carefully between it and his own projected 'Societas Christiana'. The 'leges Antilianas' have never been conclusively identified.[108]

For Morsius, however, all these disparate productions related to the same thing and were more or less direct echoes of the original Rosicrucian summons. He told Jungius, 'I have other [such works], and some by the Rosicrucians, which, if I understand by your response that future letters from me will not be unwelcome, shall be added to the foregoing.'[109] Morsius then proceeded, for no apparent reason, to inform Jungius that in 1629, fourteen years before writing, he had visited Andreæ and obtained twelve copies of the Imago and Dextera, which he had distributed to assorted leading lights in Germany and Scandinavia. Tenth on the list, amid this illustrious company, is 'Ioannes Morian Patricius Noribergensis, pijssimus chemicus' ('Johann Moriaen, patrician of Nürnberg, most pious chemist').[110]

Here, Morsius's letter provides the source for an error that has passed into a variety of footnotes, the idea that Moriaen was a Nürnberg patrician rather than the son of an immigrant Dutch artisan. Though hardly a point of crucial historical importance, this is nicely illustrative of the reliability, or rather the lack of it, of Morsius's evidence. The letter has, naturally enough, attracted a good deal of attention from historians of Rosicrucianism, for its relevance to the distribution of Rosicrucian (or quasi-Rosicrucian) literature and the continuing debate about Andreæ's alleged authorship of the original Rosicrucian manifestos.[111] These subjects are not at issue here, but it does seem worth pointing out that Morsius's letter cannot be seen as concrete evidence of anything at all beyond the confusion of the man who wrote it.

A striking feature of Morsius's list of addressees is that, with the exception of the name at its head, Herzog (Duke) August the Younger of Wolfenbüttel, not a single figure on it features in any of the several detailed accounts by Andreæ himself of the history of his project for a Christian Society (in which he specifically named numerous individuals he had tried to interest).[112] Andreæ conducted a lengthy correspondence with Herzog August, which in the early 1640s deals extensively with his plans for this society, plans he was hoping might at this date be revived under August's patronage. In 1642, he sent August a presentation copy of the Imago and Dextera, bound together, with the Duke's initials embossed on the leather binding.[113] In his letter of thanks, and again in a letter to his own agent Georg Philip <20> Hainhofer, the Duke mentioned having obtained copies of these works through Hainhofer when they first came out in 1620.[114] There is also a personal memo in August's hand to this effect appended to a letter from Andreæ dealing with the tracts.[115] Moreover, the Duke had indeed commissioned Morsius to obtain various books and manuscripts for him in 1629-30 - precisely the date at which Morsius claimed to have distributed the works.[116] This raises the question of why, when the works were the subject of so much of the Duke's correspondence and he was specifically trying to recall how he had come by them before, he never once mentioned having received copies from Morsius. In Andreæ's side of the correspondence, which is preserved in its entirety and which returns repeatedly to the history of these manifestos and of the putative society they set out to publicise, there is not one reference to Morsius. If there were a single piece of independent evidence to corroborate any of the claims Morsius made in this letter, it might be taken a little more seriously, but until any such evidence surfaces, it must be reckoned possible that the whole business took place only in Morsius's fevered imagination.

The letter is, however, very suggestive of the impression Moriaen made on Morsius in the 1620s. Moriaen was already a 'most pious chemist', and he evidently struck Morsius as a man interested in mystic literature and the promotion of non-denominational allegiances. Again, Morsius's impressions are in themselves a long way from constituting objective evidence, but in this instance there is corroboration for them. The same impression is given by Moriaen's own account of his earlier association in Nürnberg with the Reformed preacher Georg Sommer,[117] and their discussions about the reform of learning. Sommer apparently thought Moriaen's plans for theology in particular would never be realised in practice, much as he approved of them in theory.[118] Unfortunately, Moriaen was typically reticent as to what these plans might have been, but Sommer's reaction suggests they struck him as too radical ever to find favour with any established church.

Moreover, it is apparent from Moriaen's letters that he was indeed involved with an 'independent' or 'impartial' society ('unpartheÿliche geselschafft') in Nürnberg.[119] It may have been this that Sommer had in mind when he fondly recalled the 'treasured conversations you [Moriaen] held with me in Nürnberg'.[120] Moriaen's sole surviving reference to this society is very vague and fleeting, but does locate the group in Nürnberg and reveal that one of Jacob Andreæ's sons was a member.[121] Jacob Andreæ was Johann Valentin's grandfather, one of the most famous Lutheran preachers of the sixteenth century, so the son in question was presumably either Johann Valentin's father or one of his numerous uncles.[122]

This association must have been either in Moriaen's teens, before he went to Heidelberg, or, much more probably, after his return to Nürnberg in about 1627. In the latter case, this may well have been the Nürnberg group 'Antilia' with which Hartlib, at this time preparing to leave Elblag for a new life in England, was also associated, if only by correspondence. Whether or not Antilia was the society he joined, Moriaen was certainly aware of it, as appears from his oddly isolated reference over a decade later to an 'Antilianorum socium' ('member of the Antilians') whose exposé of false alchemists Hartlib had sent him.[123] Moriaen's name, however, is mentioned nowhere else in connection with Antilia or any other such society.

<21>

The history of Antilia, of Rosicrucianism, and of the seventeenth-century German vogue for semi-secret societies of various sorts (a trend so marked that the German language has characteristically come up with a single compound noun for it, Sozietätsbewegung), is a fascinating and enormously complicated subject which it would explode the limits of this study to deal with in full. It is evident that Moriaen was at least peripherally associated with the Sozietätsbewegung, but the evidence is so sparse, so vague, and in the case of Morsius's letter so utterly unreliable, that no exact account of the nature or extent of his involvement can be given. What is abundantly clear, however, is his urgent desire for a new Reformation, a Reformation that would encompass church, school and state, and that at this stage in his life he saw mystic literature and the organisation of Christian societies as part at least of the means to further it. Later he would look to Comenius's scheme of Pansophy and later still to the practice of natural philosophy, in particular to alchemy, to accomplish this goal, but his guiding vision was always the same: the coming dawn of a new era of enlightenment, unity and Christian brotherhood.

Wanderjahre

Moriaen left Nürnberg in March or April 1633, and by late April was back in Frankfurt. Here he put his name to two irenical documents that were circulating at the time.[124] Both originate from Hanau and are addressed to the divines of Great Britain by various churchmen with whom Dury had been engaged in negotiations for some two years, principally Johann Daniel Wildius, the Hanau Inspector, and Haak's uncle Paul Tossanus (Toussaint). One is a distinctly unspecific proposal for reconciliation, barely touching on the points of contention and suggesting somewhat vaguely that communication between the British and German churches would be a good thing. The other proposes the compilation of a complete body of practical divinity acceptable to all parties.[125] In both cases, Moriaen's name is a later addition to an original document, indicating only that he approved of the proposals: there is no suggestion that he had anything to do with composing the letters.

He then set off on a tour of the Netherlands. His own account of this, in a further Latin letter to Dury of 19 November 1633, is exceptionally cryptic, reading in its entirety: 'Belgium peragravi' ('I have been through the Netherlands').[126] The exact purpose of the visit remains unclear, though given the central role of de Geer in the Palatine collection, it is more than likely that maintaining contact with him or his agents was at least one of the goals. (De Geer had settled in Sweden in 1628 but made frequent visits to his Dutch homeland.) On a more personal level, Moriaen also took the opportunity to establish contact with other scholars resident there or visiting. He had evidently been a keen and able student of natural philosophy, and especially of optics, in the course of his career to this date, since he showed enough familiarity with recent developments in this field to make an impression on two leading experts in it, Isaac Beeckman and René Descartes.

Beeckman met him in Dordrecht on 24 August 1633, and made a note of his account of a perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion machine) which Johann Sibertus Kuffler had tried to sell to Duke Wolfgang-Wilhelm of Neuburg.[127] Kuffler and his younger <22> brother Abraham were members of the extensive Kuffler family Moriaen had known so well as a preacher with the Cologne church. They had been based in England from around 1620, and married two daughters of the (then) celebrated émigré Dutch inventor Cornelijs Drebbel; the perpetuum mobile in question was in fact (like a number of 'their' inventions) the work of their father-in-law, or perhaps a modification of it. According to Beeckman's account of Moriaen's report, the Duke was so impressed with Kuffler's model that he had been willing to offer ten thousand Imperials for a full-scale realisation but was dissuaded by his advisors. In the event, however, Kuffler did set up such a machine for him that year,[128] and Moriaen himself in 1640 mentioned the Drebbel/Kuffler perpetuum mobile in Pfalz-Neuburg.[129]

In recording Moriaen's account, Beeckman rather implied - as a great many people who mentioned him implied - that he thought him somewhat gullible. Moriaen did not understand how the mechanism worked but thought it had something to do with mercury: Beeckman, however, suspected that Moriaen had fallen for a ruse, the mention of mercury being a red herring used by Kuffler to mislead potential imitators.[130]

Beeckman took a more respectful interest in Moriaen's views on lens-grinding,[131] as did René Descartes, who thought it worth telling his friend Constantijn Huygens that

Some time ago, an honest man of Nürnberg by the name of Mr Moriaen, who was passing this way, told me he had often ground spherical lenses which had proved very good; but he also admitted that in doing so he made use of two movements, now applying one part of his [mechanism?] to the centre of the glass and now another, which is all very well for spherical lenses, since all parts of a sphere have an equal curvature, but as you know better than I it is not the same for hyperbolic lenses, in which the edges are markedly different from the centre.[132]

This is surely the same encounter Moriaen himself recalled in tellingly different terms when warning the mathematician John Pell, through Hartlib, not to become involved in Descartes' schemes:

I would assure him [Pell] that he will only waste much time and effort on it in vain. What he [Descartes] is looking for is still uncertain and, besides, only a point of detail. It is demonstrable on paper, but the workman cannot put it into practice, as the event will show them. I have done somewhat in these matters, and I understand the techniques so far as they are known and practised at this time. Five years ago, M. Descartes pressed me very eagerly to lend him a hand with the realisation of his project, but I could see no possibility of it, as they too have found so far in their work.[133]

That each man comes out of his own report sounding rather cleverer than the other is not in itself very surprising: more telling is the difference in the rationales behind this. Whereas Descartes' version has Moriaen 'admitting' that he lacked the skill to grind hyperbolic lenses, Moriaen's has Descartes obstinately persisting with a hypothesis that had not stood up to practical experiment. This was to become something of a refrain in Moriaen's reflections on natural philosophy, placing him firmly in the Hartlibian camp of <23> experimental research. Deeply mistrustful both of 'book learning' as opposed to experiment and of theory divorced from practice, these thinkers interpreted Nature by the twin lights recommended by Bacon, the Book of God's Works and the Book of God's Word. For them, Descartes' resolutely deductive thought, though admirable for breaking with scholasticism, threatened to replace it with as great a vanity, that of shutting oneself up in the labyrinth of fallible human reason.[134]

From the Netherlands, Moriaen returned to Cologne. Here on 6 October 1633, under the auspices of the secret church he had so long served, he was married to Odilia van Zeuel, the sister of his former colleague Peter.[135] Of Odilia, virtually nothing else is known at all. Her presence is barely felt in the correspondence except as someone receiving or sending greetings, or whose ill health interfered with Moriaen's work and curtailed the time he had available for writing (which does at least imply he made some effort to tend her). The tone of his references to her is generally affectionate and solicitous, but no impression is given of her character or the closeness of the marriage.

Mystifyingly, a letter from Moriaen to Dury apparently dated 19 November, though the date has been altered and is ambiguous, refers to the marriage as imminent. Perhaps Moriaen was having one of his frequent bouts of absent-mindedness and meant to write September.[136] In the same letter, he informed Dury that he had 'frustrated, or, rather, freed' himself of his Nürnberg citizenship.[137] Though the letter bears no address, it must have been sent from Cologne.

Given that he had so urgently needed to flee the city six years previously, it is a little surprising that he should then have settled in Cologne for a further two and a half years. However, his involvement with the Reformed Church was henceforth purely as a lay member: there is no further mention of his service in the Protokolle. Moriaen's letters from this period supply the earliest surviving evidence of an interest that was to be his consuming passion in later years: Paracelsian chemistry. By the end of 1635 at least, he was producing chemical medicines for sale through Abraham de Bra. Advice and materials were supplied him by van Assche, who had returned to his original profession as a physician after being dismissed from the church, and was now practising in Amsterdam. It was not, however, a straightforward teacher-pupil relationship, more an exchange between equals: though eager to receive his friend's recommendations, Moriaen was confident enough of his own abilities to query or challenge them in some instances. There is reference too to the authority of Johann Hartmann (1568-1631), who at Marburg in 1609 became the first professor of chemistry (specifically iatrochemistry) in Europe. Whether Moriaen was actually earning his living as a medical practitioner is not clear, but it is obvious that the prospect of financial recompense provided at least some incentive. Physic provides the classic example of a field in which the profit motive and charitable service of one's neighbour could be reconciled. He was working on the 'Elixir proprietatis Paracelsi', and also on medical preparations of juniper berries and bezoar stone, both staples of the Paracelsian tradition, and told van Assche:

I have been busy making Bezoar for some time, and a few days ago sent about 14lb. to Mr de Bra, that not only our friends but others too might <24> be [served?] by it […] were any profit to come from my work, it would encourage me the more to [delve into?] the secrets of Nature.[138]

This was an interest that remained with him throughout his life, and several of Hartlib's correspondents referred to him specifically as a medical practitioner, though there is no evidence that he possessed any medical qualification, and the title 'Dr' was never applied to him.[139] The available evidence provides no means of gauging his success as a physician, either from his own point of view or that of his patients. However, a rather crestfallen report that the glasses in which he was rectifying some medicine had burst apart and that he could not understand what he had done wrong suggests that initially at least it was less than overwhelming.[140]

Odilia Moriaen's two brothers, Adam and Peter, were living with or near the couple in Cologne. Though there is no mention whatsoever of the van Zeuels in any account of the scientific literature of the period, it is obvious that Peter at least was a committed Paracelsian, and in Moriaen's eyes a proficient one. In 1651, Moriaen cited him as a vital source of information on alchemical matters with whom he had hoped to collaborate on the 'great work' (transmutation), a plan frustrated by Peter's death.[141] A visit from him in 1642 was sufficient excuse for a two month lapse in the correspondence, 'we found so much to do both in our joint affairs and my private ones that I was able to think of nothing else'.[142] The letter does not specify what these affairs were that were of such consuming interest, but it is altogether likely that alchemy featured among them. It is quite conceivable, indeed, that Peter von Zeuel's alchemical and iatrochemical expertise constituted part of his sister's attraction.

Adam von Zeuel, despite his new brother-in-law's medical prowess, died not long before 24 November 1635,[143] and it may be that the Moriaens benefited financially from this event. This would account for Moriaen's deciding about a year later to move to Amsterdam and becoming a seemingly successful financial speculator. It would also explain his later rather odd remark that he had at some point acquired some farmlands 'with my wife',[144] which I can only construe as meaning that the lands came along with the wife through an inheritance or a dowry. Again in 1640 he mentioned his hopes of improving 'our lands' ('vnseren landguttern') by applying some of the methods of Hartlib's protégé, the agriculturalist Gabriel Plattes.[145] This striking and very unusual inclusion of Odilia in a first person plural, effectively acknowledging her as co-proprietor, strongly suggests the lands belonged originally to her family. In this case, they would presumably have been in the region of Cologne, and have suffered badly from the Thirty Years War: Moriaen mentioned that, like most such lands in these war-torn times, they yielded very little.[146]

Moriaen had decided to move by January 1637, when he wrote to van Assche that they planned to arrive in early or mid-May.[147] He added, however, that Odilia was pregnant,[148] and that Peter van Zeuel, who had earlier been suffering from an abdominal disorder[149] and was evidently still in poor health, could not be abandoned until a wife had been found to take care of him.[150] These considerations detained the Moriaens in Cologne for over a year. Their daughter Maria Elisabeth (named after Johann's and Odilia's mothers in that order) was baptised into the German Reformed Church there <25> on 13 June 1637.[151] The best part of another year elapsed before a wife was found to tend Peter van Zeuel, who married Gertraud Breyers on 12 March 1638.[152]

It was probably soon after this that the move was finally made. At the date of his first surviving letter to Hartlib, dated Amsterdam, 13 December 1638, Moriaen owed his friend replies to three letters. The excuse he gave for his failure to reply was lack of time due to his wife's and his own recent illnesses and the upheaval of their departure from Cologne. One at least of Hartlib's letters must, then, have been received before that departure, and the earliest of them is mentioned as being dated 13 July 1638. Some three months later, Moriaen wrote that he could not comment on a treatise on magnets until it was sent on to him from Cologne, where he had left it behind: again this powerfully suggests that the move was a relatively recent event, and that Hartlib had been sending him materials to Cologne.[153] Settled at last, Moriaen now embarked on a new career as a businessman and on what was initially at least a rather more stable phase of his life than the fifteen or so years spent in the service of the Reformed Church and its exiled ministers.

[1] The only indication of his date of birth is his mention in a letter to Benjamin Worsley of 2 July 1651 that he was nearly sixty at the time of writing: 'id unum tantum addam me prope sexagenuarium esse' (HP 9/16/10A).

[2] The most notable examples are Hamburg and - after it had shaken off Spanish dominion at the turn of the century - the Dutch Netherlands. See Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529-1819 (Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle and Sidney, 1985).

[3] See Hans Neidiger, 'Die Entstehung der evangelisch-reformierten Gemeinde in Nürnberg als rechtsgeschichtliches Problem', Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 43 (1952), 225-340. My account of Nürnberg at the time of Moriaen's birth is heavily indebted to Neidiger's fascinating study, which far transcends the bounds of its somewhat dry-sounding self-appointed brief.

[4] Kurt Pilz, 'Nürnberg und die Niederlande', Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 43 (1952), 1-153, p. 56.

[5] Neidiger, 'Die Entstehung der evangelisch-reformierten Gemeinde in Nürnberg', 258.

[6] Ibid., 258-9.

[7] The names of Moriaen's parents are to be found in the record of his marriage to Odilia von Zeuel, Protokolle der hochdeutsch-reformierten Gemeinde zu Köln 1599-1754 II (Cologne, 1990), 476, no. 947.13.

[8] There are only two signatures to non-Latin holograph letters spelled 'Morian'. Latin letters have to be considered separately, since it was normal to use the Latin form of a name when writing in that language (Hartlib for instance becoming Hartlibius, and Dury Duræus), but even when writing in Latin Moriaen occasionally used the Dutch form. A significant exception to the general preference for the spelling 'Morian' is provided by Dury, who was brought up in the Netherlands: he used both forms, but marginally preferred the Dutch.

[9] Four holograph letters in Dutch (to Justinus van Assche) date from before his move (UBA N65a-d).

[10] Moriaen to Hartlib, 5 April 1640, HP 37/62A, referring to de Bra as 'schwager' (brother-in-law). Though the term could be used more loosely in the seventeenth century than it is now, there also survives a letter to Hartlib of 22 April 1661 from one Isaac de Bra - doubtless Abraham's son - enclosing a (now lost) recommendation 'from my uncle Johann Moriaen' ('meÿnes herrn Ohman Ioh: Moriaen') (HP 27/41/1A).

[11] Neidiger, 'Die Entstehung der evangelisch-reformierten Gemeinde in Köln', 270.

[12] The evidence for this is, again, the existence of a nephew, Jean Abeel, who, writing from Amsterdam on 10 April 1659, sent Hartlib £3 'van mynnen waerden Oom Iohan Morian' ('from my worthy uncle Johann Moriaen') (HP 27/44/2A).

[13] See Ole Peter Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London: The Dutch Church in Austin Friars 1603-1642 (Leiden, New York, Copenhagen and Cologne, 1989), 257, and J.H. Hessels (ed.), Ecclesiæ Londino-Batavæ archivum (London, 1887-97) III, passim. Neither of these can have been the husband, for their marriages are recorded (ibid., 270), but a family connection is altogether likely. There was also another Jan Abeel at Austin Friars at least between 1648 and 1656 (Hessels III, nos. 3013 and 3043).

[14] Moriaen to Hartlib, 22 July 1650, HP 37/156A.

[15] Moriaen to Hartlib, 23 January 1640, HP 37/53A.

[16] G. Toepke, Die Matrikel der Universität Heidelberg von 1386 bis 1662 (Heidelberg, 1886) II, 254, entry 84.

[17] Moriaen to Hartlib, 23 June 1639, HP 37/27B. Georg Vechner matriculated at Heidelberg two months after Moriaen, on 8 July 1611 (Matrikel der Universität Heidelberg II, 254, entry 118).

[18] Howard Hotson, Johann Heinrich Alsted: Encyclopedism, Millennarianism and the Second Reformation in Germany (PhD thesis, Oxford, 1991), 41 and 82. For a fuller account of Keckermann and his impact, see the second chapter of this thesis, pp. 52-90. On Ramus and his impact, see Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).

[19] Ibid., 82-5. See below, 101-112, for a fuller discussion.

[20] See Gerald Lyman Soliday, A Community in Conflict: Frankfurt Society in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Hanover, New Hampshire, 1974).

[21] 'Weil die Brüder sich entschlossen den dritten Diener zu berufen, und uns einer mit Namen Johannes Morian vorgeschlagen wird, welcher sich auf die zukünftige Woch wird finden lassen zu (Frankfurt); als sollen die Brüder Wilhelm Engels und Johan Fassing Anordnung tun, daß gemelter Morian in seiner Predigt von den vornehmsten Gliedern der Kirche angehöret werde, damit man abnehmen möge, ob er dieser Gemeinde würde früchtbarlich dienen können' - Protokolle I, 235, no. 750. The Protokolle are a fascinating document, but unfortunately are published in a massively modernised and standardised form with what appear to be somewhat ad hoc editorial policies: it is never made clear what the bracketing of (Frankfurt) indicates, though I would guess it is editorial expansion, perhaps of 'Ffort', a common abbreviation of the name.

[22] Protokolle I, 235, no. 752, 25 April 1619.

[23] 'Vom ersten Schlag, 1566/1568, über berichtete oder nur angedeutete Überfälle auf Predigten […] ist es bis 1627 eine fortwährende Kette von Verhören, Geldstrafen, Haft und Stadtverweisungen, von Hausdurchsuchungen und Hausverschließungen, worunter die Evangelischen zu leiden haben' - Rudolf Löhr, 'Zur Geschichte der vier heimlichen Kölner Gemeinden', Protokolle IV, 11-33, pp. 16-17 (prepared for publication by Dieter Kastner: Löhr died before completing his work). See also A. Rosenkranz, Das Evangelische Rheinland: ein rheinisches Gemeinde- und Pfarrerbuch I (Düsseldorf, 1956), esp. p. 376. Rosenkranz gives the name of the 'third minister' in Cologne from 1619-27 as Johann Moreau, which must be a variant form or a mistranscription of 'Morian'.

[24] Protokolle I, 243, no. 775. On 29 July 1626, the maximum number was further reduced to one (pp. 327-8, no. 1040).

[25] Fama Fraternitatis des löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes (Kassel, 1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis oder Bekanntnuß der löblichen Bruderschafft deß hochgeehrten Rosen Creutzes (1615).

[26] Moriaen to Hartlib, 19 Feb./1 March 1658, HP31/18/7B.

[27] Löhr, 'Zur Geschichte der vier heimlichen Kölner Gemeinden', Protokolle IV, 11-33, 19.

[28] 'in Ansehung gedachte Witwe seine Mutter sei oder zum wenigsten dafür gehalten werde' - Protokolle I, 238-40, nos. 762 and 767 (3 and 31 July 1619).

[29] 'Wir kommen in Erfahrung, daß Johann Mosten bald nach dem Gebrauch des heiligen Abendmahls sich mit dem Trunk überladen und darüber zu Hause gegen seine Hausfrau ungebührlich verhalten, dadurch die Gemeinde Christi geärgert. Soll deswegen bestraft werden von Bruder Jordan und Morian' - Protokolle I, 259, no. 838 (16 June 1621).

[30] Protokolle I, 299, no. 966.

[31] 'daß er seiner gewesenen Magd nachgangen, hab er allein getan, sie zu versuchen, ob sie fromm wäre oder nicht' - Protokolle I, 302, no. 977.

[32] Protokolle I, 309-10, no. 1000 (7 Aug. 1625).

[33] 'Matthias Kuiper ob […] er […] mit hohem Eid und teuren Worten einsteils Besserung angelobet, andern Teils seine Mängel verneinet, so haben danach die Sachen anderes befunden, daß er dem Saufen, Spielen und Leichtfertigkeit unaufhörlich nachhanget' - Protokolle I, 312, no. 1006.

[34] Protokolle I, 327, no. 1037 (8 July 1626).

[35] 'Christian Stoffgen wird berüchtigt, daß er in Gegenwart einer Päpstischer Frauen sich ungebührlich verlauten lassen, daß er von D. Lauterbach unfreundlich tractiert wurde, und dabei gesagt, "so tun unsere Eltesten". Soll darüber von Bruder Johann und Schütgens angesprochen und nach Befindung gestrafet werden' - Protokolle I, 305, no. 988 (6 March 1625).

[36] Protokolle I, 282, no. 919 (5 July 1623).

[37] Protokolle I, 335, no. 1056.

[38] Protokolle I, 242, no. 774 (10 Oct. 1619).

[39] Protokolle I, 118, no. 286.1.

[40] Protokolle I, 122, no. 303 (14 June 1606).

[41] Protokolle I, 118, no. 286.1 (he took over from Jacob Pergens at the end of 1605).

[42] He is mentioned several times in Moriaen's correspondence and seems to have been something of an inventor. Eph 1640 refers to a 'Luterbach Mr Morians cozen' who has designed a folding table; Mersenne in Sept. 1640 told Haak that 'Mr Lauterbach vostre amy' had visited him bringing an unspecified invention of Thomas Harrison (Correspondance de Mersenne XI, 415; HP 18/2/24A), and Comenius told Hartlib on 13 Dec. 1656 that Lauterbach had presented him with a copy of his 'brachygraphia' (shorthand) (Blekastad, Unbekannte Briefe, 31; HP 7/111/27A). Blekastad suggests the Glogau syndic Johann Lauterbach, but with no other evidence than the name.

[43] Protokolle II, 275, no. 898, and 332, nos. 1048-9.

[44] 'zue Cölln einer seii sehr perfect Inn solchen [optischen] Sachen, der hab ainen gesellen Morian genandt' - August von Anhalt to Widemann, 13 Dec. 1626, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek Hannover, MS iv, 341, 861, cit. Inge Keil, 'Technology transfer and scientific specialization: Johann Wiesel, optician of Augsburg, and the Hartlib circle', SHUR, 268-278, p. 272, n. 18.

[45] As appears from his letter to Hevelius, 9 April 1650, Observatoire de Paris Corr. Hev. AC I, 2, fol. 215v, ref. Keil, 'Technology transfer and scientific specialization', 275.

[46] Moriaen to [Worsley?], 4 May 1657, HP 42/2/7B.

[47] As Inge Keil suggests, 'Technology transfer and scientific specialization', 272.

[48] See below, 166-72, for a detailed discussion of Moriaen's ideas on this notion, and his reports of experiments to demonstrate it.

[49] See NNBW I, 187-8; Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman, ed. Cornelijs de Waard I (The Hague, 1939), 219, n. 2 and II (1942), 175-6, n. 3; E.G.E. van der Wall, Serrarius, 39-42 and passim.

[50] See J. Minton Batten's hagiographical but soundly researched John Dury, Advocate of Christian Reunion (Chicago, 1944); Karl Brauer, Die Unionstätigkeit John Duries unter dem Protektorat Cromwells (Marburg, 1907); G. Westin, Negotiations about Church Unity 1628-1634 (Uppsala, 1932); George Turnbull, HDC; Anthony Milton, '"The Unchanged Peacemaker"? John Dury and the politics of irenicism in England 1628-43', SHUR, 95-117.

[51] See van der Wall, Serrarius, and 'The Amsterdam Millenarian Petrus Serrarius (1600-1669) and the Anglo-Dutch Circle of Philo-Judaists', Jewish Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century: Studies and Documents, ed. J. van den Berg and E.G.E. van der Wall (Dordrecht, Boston and London, 1988), 73-94.

[52] Jacob Beeckman to van Assche, 31 March 1624, Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman IV, 79-80.

[53] Van der Wall, Serrarius, 40-41.

[54] Moriaen to Hartlib, 14 November 1639, HP 37/47B.

[55] Van der Wall, Serrarius, 45-50.

[56] See Starck, Lübeckische Kirchen-Geschichte, 785-811, partially reproduced in Steiner, Morsius, 48-57.

[57] 'denn Er selbsten Iustinus vmb dieser vrsach willen des ministerij entsezet worden vnd annoch von der Communion abgehalten wird' - Moriaen to Hartlib, 14 Nov. 1639, HP 37/47B.

[58] See Pamela R. Barnett, Theodore Haak, FRS (1605-1690): The First German Translator of Paradise Lost (The Hague, 1962). The book is a fund of information on the Hartlib circle and gives a vivid impression of their milieu.

[59] See Webster, Great Instauration, 54, for details.

[60] Barnett, Haak, 13.

[61] 'wegen großer gegenwärtiger Not und schrecklichen Zorn Gottes' - Protokolle I, 312, no. 1006.

[62] 'weil es uns allbereit an Personen mangelt, und je länger, je mehr ermangeln wird' - Protokolle I, 297, no. 960.

[63] Protokolle I, 280, no. 913.

[64] Protokolle I, 328-9, no. 1042.

[65] 'In Betrachtung der großen Gefahr und Not, die an diesem Ort je länger je mehr zunimmt, wollen sich die sämtlichen Brüder mit Anrufung göttlicher Hilf auf die allerheilsamsten und sichersten Mittel eifrig bedenken, wie wir möchten unsern Gottesdienst besten Fleißes verrichten, und gleichwohl Gefahr wohl vermieden bleibe' - Protokolle I, 336, no. 1057.

[66] 'daß gleichwohl er uns seine Gutwilligkeit, solang es Gelegenheit gibt, wolle wiederfahren lassen' - Protokolle I, 334, no. 1055.

[67] 'Über die Gelegenheit Bruder J haben die sämtlichen Brüder aus Betrachtung hochdringender Not einmütiglich dahin geschlossen, daß, ob wir wohl sehr ungern seines Dienstes entbehren wollten, dennoch ihm auf sein Begehren zu willfahren' - Protokolle I, 337, no. 1060.

[68] Grell, Dutch Calvinists, 186-7; Barnett, Haak, 21.

[69] Moriaen to Hartlib, 3 October 1641, HP 37/88B. Turnbull, confusing English and German usage of the perfect tense, takes this to mean the five years up to and including 1641 (HDC, 355), an error followed by Blekastad (Comenius, 328).

[70] Hans Neidiger, 'Die Entstehung der evangelisch-reformierten Gemeinde in Nürnberg' (see n. 3 above), 270.

[71] Ibid., 271-3. My account of the Nürnberg collection is again heavily indebted to Neidiger's excellent article, esp. pp. 269-75.

[72] Ibid., 273.

[73] On de Geer (1587-1652), see NNBW and Blekastad, Comenius, passim.

[74] Moriaen to Hartlib, 3 October 1641, HP 37/88B.

[75] See below, Chapter Four, section five, and Chapter Seven, section two.

[76] Cf. Ole Peter Grell, Dutch Calvinists in Early Stuart London, ch. 5 ('The Collections for the Palatinate'); 176-223, Barnett, Haak, 21-4, and Hessels III, nos. 2141 and 2244. Haak acted as representative in England for the Lower Palatine refugees.

[77] Grell, Dutch Calvinists, 206-7 and 223.

[78] See Richard van Dülmen, 'Schwärmer und Separatisten in Nürnberg (1618-1648)', Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 55 (1973), 107-137, 115. Van Dülmen is overly inclined to take passing mentions in letters as evidence of close and formalised contacts, and consequently gives an impression of more organised and active resistance to orthodoxy than his evidence warrants. The essay is nonetheless a valuable account of unofficial religion in Nürnberg at the period and the (not very effective) measures taken to suppress it.

[79] See van der Wall, Serrarius, 112-14.

[80] HP 9/15/1A-B.

[81] Van Dülmen, 'Schwärmer und Separatisten in Nürnberg', 132-4, esp. n. 96 which quotes extensively from the commission's findings.

[82] Moriaen to Dury, 19 Sept. 1633, HP 9/15/3A: 'Nuptias neptis meæ ex sorore, cum Petro Neefio tibi non ignoto celebravi'.

[83] Van Dülmen, 'Schwärmer und Separatisten in Nürnberg', 115.

[84] Van Dülmen, 'Schwärmer und Separatisten in Nürnberg', 116, n. 50, and 119. On the pietistically inclined J.F. Münster, see van der Wall, Serrarius, 112.

[85] See Ernst Georg Wolters, 'Paul Felgenhauers Leben und Wirken', Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 54 (1956), 63-84, and 55 (1957), 54-94, esp. part 2, 72-3.

[86] Ibid., part 2, p. 69.

[87] UBA N65a (10 March 1634), a letter principally devoted to alchemy, but which concludes 'als ul den monarchen Speigel oock per dominum Serrarium (quem ex me ut salutes rogo) niet tewege brengen can so moet ick dien in de toecomende missie bestellen' ('if you cannot obtain the Monarchenspiegel through Mr Serrarius (to whom please send my regards), I can order it at the next [Frankfurt] Fair'). Van der Wall (p. 100) takes this to mean that Moriaen was trying to obtain the work through van Assche, but the implication could equally be that Moriaen would try to get it for van Assche if Serrarius could not.

[88] See Margaret Lewis Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme: A Study of German Mysticism in Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1964), and Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London, 1972).

[89] Ephemerides 1634 (Eph 34), HP 29/2/12A-B.

[90] The principle source on Morsius is Heinrich Schneider, Joachim Morsius und sein Kreis: zur Geistesgeschichte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Lübeck, 1929), which repeats or supersedes everything about him in Rudolf Kayser, 'Joachim Morsius', MCG 6 (1897), 307-19, and Will-Erich Peuckert, Die Rosenkreuzer. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation (Jena, 1928).

[91] Fama Fraternitatis Deß Löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes and Confessio Fraternitatis. Textually, much the best modern edition is provided by Richard van Dülmen in Quellen und Forschungen zur Württembergischen Kirchengeschichte Bd. 6 (Stuttgart, 1973), which unlike all its predecessors makes no attempt to modernise or 'correct' the original text. The introduction and notes, however, are perfunctory and often inaccurate. The colossal impact of the Rosicrucian manifestos, and the complex question of their origins and authorship, have been discussed and debated respectively at daunting length ever since the works were first published, and there is still no scholarly consensus in sight. Many later myths have their origin in Gottfried Arnold's wonderfully vivid but not overly reliable Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historien (Schaffhausen, 1740-42) vol. II, book 7, ch. 18, and vol. III, book 4, ch. 25. Will-Erich Peuckert's Die Rosenkreuzer. Zur Geschichte einer Reformation (Jena, 1928) is a book rich in useful references and imaginative speculation but very short on reliability: Peuckert has a particularly annoying habit of not distinguishing quotation from narrative, so that what appears to be (modernised) citation of a source sometimes turns out to be his own invention or commentary, and vice versa. Frances Yates, in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1975), also tends to let her imagination run away with her, and her thesis that the Rosicrucians were formed as part of the support mechanism for Friedrich V of the Palatinate has subsequently been disproved, but the book contains much of interest, and depicts with singular vividness the extraordinary contemporary reaction to the Fama and Confessio. Probably the soberest account (even if one does not accept the author's conclusion that Andreæ had nothing whatsoever to do with the manifestos) is J.W. Montgomery's chapter on 'Andreæ and the Occult Tradition' in Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreæ (1586-1654), Phoenix of the Theologians (The Hague, 1973) I, 158-255. See also Paul Arnold, Histoire des Rose-Croix et les origines de la franc'maçonnerie (Paris, 1955); Die Erbe des Christian Rosenkreuz: Vorträge gehalten anläßlich des Amsterdamer Symposiums 18-20 November 1986 (no editor named) (Amsterdam, 1986), especially Adam McLean, 'The Impact of the Rosicrucian Manifestos in Britain' (170-179); Roland Edighoffer, Rose Croix et société idéale selon Jean Valentin Andreæ (Paris, 1995); Susanna Åkerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle: The Transformation of a seventeenth-century philosophical libertine (Leiden, 1991), especially Chapter Seven, 'Neo-Stoic Pan-Protestants and the Monarchy', and the same author's Rose Cross over the Baltic: the Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe (Leiden, 1998).

[92] G.F. Guhrauer, Joachim Jungius und sein Zeitalter (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1850), 67; Schneider, Morsius, 30-31.

[93] Schneider, Morsius, 31-2, including a summary of the letter.

[94] The rest of the family were jewellers; Morsius was an itinerant scholar who seems never to have held down any position for long.

[95] The lady in question, of whom no more is known than that her maiden name was Telsen, would perhaps have placed a slightly different emphasis on the quaint assertion of Morsius's biographer that 'it seems a likely conjecture that the woman was unable to come to terms with his restless, fantastical nature, which, in its continual yearning quest for the new, never attained a firm, masculine clarity' ('Die Vermutung liegt nahe, daß die Frau sich nicht in sein unruhiges, phantastisches Wesen zu finden wußte, das immer nach Neuem sehnsüchtig ausschauend nie zu einer festen männlichen Klarheit gelangte') - Schneider, Morsius, 64.

[96] Morsius, COPIA Einer kurtzen eylfertigen/ doch Rechtmässiger Ablehnung vnd Protestation […] in justissimâ causâ Morsiana ('Philadelphia', 1634).

[97] Morsius to Jungius, 26 Aug. 1643, Stadts- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, 98.19-22; transcript in Schneider, Morsius, 57-62, following R. Avé-Lallemant, Des Dr. Joachim Jungius Briefwechsel, (Lübeck, 1863). An earlier transcript published by Guhrauer (Jungius, 232-5) contains a great many errors; Avé-Lallemant's is much superior. Quotations here are from the original manuscript.

[98] Guhrauer, Jungius, 69-71; Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 1998), 91-101.

[99] See Guhrauer, Jungius, 56-67, and Peuckert, Die Rosenkreuzer, 88-9 and 228-30 on the suggestion of Jungius's involvement with Rosicrucianism. Not even Peuckert, who can generally be relied on to find evidence of Rosicrucian mysticism almost anywhere, takes the idea very seriously.

[100] 'tertiam partem Dextræ amoris porrectæ & Imaginis Societatis Evangelicæ, Themidem videlicet auream de legibus illius societatis, vnd leges Antilianas […] oder andre particularia de istâ societate ac socijs' - SUBH 98.19v.

[101] The best and fullest account of Andreæ, which contains an extensive bibliography, is J.W. Montgomery's Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreæ (1586-1654), Phoenix of the Theologians (The Hague, 1973); see also Andreæ's Selbstbiographie, translated from the Latin manuscript Vita ab ipso conscripta by David Christoph Seybold (Winterthur, 1799). On his relations with Comenius, see Comenius, Opera didactica omnia (Amsterdam, 1657; facsimile reproduction Prague, 1957) I, 283-4, and Ludwig Keller's fanciful extrapolations from this, 'Johann Valentin Andreæ und Comenius', MCG 1 (1893), 229-41.

[102] Turnbull discovered copies of the two tracts in question, which were long supposed lost, among the Hartlib Papers (HP 25/2/1A-B and 6A-20B, and 55/19/1A-15A), and published them with a valuable introduction in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie (ZfdPh) 73 (1954), 407-32. He followed this with a reprint of Hall's English translation in ZfdPh 74 (1955), 151-85. A printed version of the originals was later discovered in the HAB, Wolfenbüttel, by Roland Edighoffer: see his 'Deux écrits de Johann Valentin Andreæ retrouvés ou le nouveau Neveu de Rameau', Etudes Germaniques (Oct.-Dec. 1975), 466-70.

[103] Turnbull, 'John Hall's letters to Samuel Hartlib', Review of English Studies New Series 4 (1953), 221-33. They were published as A Modell of a Christian Society and The Right Hand of Christian Love Offered, with a dedication to Hartlib, in 1647.

[104] See McLean, 'The Impact of the Rosicrucian Manifestos in Britain' (n. 91 above).

[105] See Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 85-7, for a succinct summary.

[106] Not, as Guhrauer reads, 'Andilianos', a mistake taken over, with a surprised '(sic!)', by Turnbull ('Johann Valentin Andreæs Societas Christiana', ZfdPh 73, 410).

[107] For a detailed account of this group, see Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 1998), 114-37.

[108] Cf. Turnbull, 'Johann Valentin Andreæs Societas Christiana', 409-10. Dickson in The Tessera of Antilia, 121-2 states as a near-certainty that (as Turnbull had much more cautiously speculated) the 'Leges Societatis Christianæ' at HP 55/20/1A-5A are the 'leges Antilianas'. While I would certainly not rule this out, I do not think the evidence is by any means conclusive.

[109] 'habeo alia, & de Rhodostauroticis singularia, si intellexero ex responsorijs vestris, literas meas vobis non ingratas futuras, quæ superioribus addenda erunt' - SUBH 98.21v.

[110] SUBH 98.20v. The twelve alleged recipients are enumerated in detail. They are: Herzog August the Younger of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel; Prince Moritz of Hessen, the great patron of alchemists; Duke Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein; Prince Ludwig of Anhalt, founder of the literary 'Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft'; Holger Rosenkrantz, the King of Denmark's former privy counsellor; Johann Adler Salvius, a Swedish diplomat; Henricus a Qualen, a Danish noble; Laurens Grammendorf, a leading German lawyer and theologian; Wendelin Sybelist, a spagyrist who had been personal doctor to the Russian Czar; Moriaen; Johann Jakob Pömer, a Nürnberg patrician associated with Antilia, and Georg Brasch, a Lutheran pastor who - ironically enough - represented Lüneburg at the conventicle arranged in 1633 by the churches of Hamburg, Lübeck and Lüneburg to discuss ways of dealing with such enthusiasts as Felgenhauer, Raselius, Tanckmar and Morsius (see Caspar Heinrich Starck, Lübeckische Kirchen-Geschichte, 797-8 and 977-80).

[111] His authorship is strongly contested by J. Kvačala, J.V. Andreäs Antheil an Geheimen Gesellschaften (Jurjew, 1899), which like so much of Kvačala's work stands up as well now as it did a hundred years ago; R. Kienast, Johann Valentin Andreæ und die vier echten Rosenkreutzer-Schriften (Leipzig, 1926), and J.W. Montgomery, Cross and Crucible: Johann Valentin Andreæ, Phoenix of the Theologians (The Hague, 1963). For important supplementary evidence, see Wolf-Dieter Otte, 'Ein Einwand gegen Johann Valentin Andreäs Verfasserschaft der Confessio Fraternitatis R.C.', Wolfenbüttler Beiträge 3 (1978), 97-113. For summaries of the evidence presented on either side and full bibliographies of the issue, see Montgomery, op. cit., who comes out against Andreæ's authorship, Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), who suspends judgment, Susanna Åkerman, Rose Cross Over the Baltic (Leiden, 1998), who favours the attribution, and Donald R. Dickson, The Tessera of Antilia: Utopian Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in the Early Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 1998), 20-21 and 62-88, who contends that Andreæ was one of a team of co-authors.

[112] In his autobiography, his letters to Herzog August in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, his funeral oration on his friend Wilhelm von der Wense who first proposed the scheme (in Amicorum singularium clarissimorum funera, Lüneburg, 1642), and a letter to Comenius of 16 Sept. 1629 (Comenius, Opera didactica omnia (Amsterdam, 1657) I, 284). A letter from Andreæ to August of 27 June 1642, HAB 65.1 Extrav. fols. 21r-23v, includes a list (admittedly obviously incomplete) of the 'Pauci, ad quos Christianj amoris dextera porrecta pervenit' ('the few whom the Right Hand of Christian Love reached': Andreæ's emphasis is very apparent in the original). Though often interpreted as a membership list of the Societas Christiana, this is surely only a punning account of which individuals Andreæ was aware had received copies of the work. It is reproduced in MGP I, 184, but the usually meticulous Kvačala mysteriously transcribes 'Daniel Hizler' as 'Daniel Hikler' and 'Baltas. B. Roggendorffij' as 'Baltas. B. Seckendorffius', errors uncharacteristically taken over by Montgomery (Cross and Crucible I, 176). A few members of the society who do not appear on this list are mentioned in the funeral oration on Wense and the autobiography. See Montgomery, Cross and Crucible I, 176, for details.

[113] The copy is still held in the Herzog August Bibliothek and is the only known copy of the original edition.

[114] August to Andreæ, 26 July 1642, HAB 236.1 Extrav. fol. 30r; August to Hainhofer, 19/29 July 1642, HAB 236.1 Extrav. fol. 12r

[115] Andreæ's letter is dated 27 June 1642: HAB 65.1 Extrav. fol. 23v; transcript in MGP I, 184.

[116] August to Hainhofer, 9 Jan. and 22 May 1630, HAB 149.6 Extrav. fols. 214r and 214v-215r.

[117] Sommer was (according to this same letter) a minister in the Upper Palatinate at some date before 1639, by which time he was in church service in Danzig. Dury had contacted him in 1633 via Haak's uncle Paul Tossanus seeking support for his ecumenical projects (HP 5/53/9A-B).

[118] Moriaen to Hartlib, 23 June 1639, HP 37/28B.

[119] Moriaen to Hartlib, 13 Dec. 1638, HP 37/1B.

[120] 'lieben discursen so der herr mit mir zue Nurmberg gepflogen' - Sommer to Moriaen, as quoted by the latter in a letter to Hartlib, 23 June 1639, HP 37/28A.

[121] Moriaen to Hartlib, 13 Dec. 1638, HP 37/1B.

[122] One of Jacob Andreæ's sons was called Jacob after him, but Moriaen was almost certainly referring to the much more famous preacher.

[123] Moriaen to Hartlib, 24 March 1639, HP 37/14A.

[124] Copies at HP 59/10/53A-60B, 24 Feb. 1633, and 59/10/113A-116B, n.d. Both were signed by Moriaen on 23 April. See HDC, 146, n. 1, and 153.

[125] Published with an English translation in Dury's The Earnest Breathings of Forreign Protestants (London, 1658).

[126] HP 9/15/3A.

[127] De Waard (ed.), Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman III (The Hague, 1945), 302.

[128] See NNBW II, 736 (which misprints the date as 1663).

[129] Moriaen to Hartlib, 23 Jan. 1640, HP 37/54A.

[130] He may well have been right, but a contemporary account of Drebbel's device also implies some sort of chemical process at work: Drebbel 'extracted a fierie spirit, out of the minerall matter, joininge the same with his proper aire, which encluded in the Axeltree, being hollow, carrieth the wheeles, making a continual rotation or revolution' (Thomas Tymme, Dialogue Philosophicall (London, 1612): summary and extracts in Harris, The Two Netherlanders, 152-5). Harris believes the device to have been powered by variations in temperature and air pressure, though how this could have yielded the regularity claimed for the device it is difficult to see.

[131] Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman III, 300 (24 Aug. 1633) and 381 (1 July 1634).

[132] 'Il y a quelque temps qu'un honnête homme de Nüremberg, nommé M. Morian, passant par ici [Utrecht], me dit qu'il avait souvent taillé sur le tour des verres sphériques qui s'étaient trouvés fort bons; mais il m'avoua aussi qu'il s'y servait de deux mouvements, appliquant tantôt une partie de son modele contre le milieu du verre, tantôt une autre; ce qui est bon pour les verres sphériques, à cause que toutes les parties d'un globe sont également courbées, mais, comme vous savez mieux que moi, ce n'est pas la même de l'hyperbole, dont les côtés sont fort différents du milieu' - 8 Dec. 1635, Correspondence of Descartes and Constantin Huygens, ed. Leon Roth (Oxford, 1926), 9. I am puzzled by Descartes' use of the word 'modele' here but assume from the sense that it must refer to the instrument Moriaen used to grind his lenses.

[133] 'Ich will ihn [Pell] woll versichern das viel zeit vnd muhe nur vergeblich zuebringen […] wird[.] was Er suchet ist noch vngewiß vnd darzue nur ein particular stuckh. […] Auß diesem fundament der parabolæ ist es meines erachtens nicht zue practiziern. auff dem pappier kan mans woll demonstrirn aber der artifex kans nicht pstirn, wie sie mit der that woll finden werden. […] Ich hab in diesen sachen auch etwas gethan vnd verstehe die handarbeit so weit sie dieser zeit vblich vnd bekand ist H des Cartes hatt mich berait vor 5 Iahren sehr eÿferig ersucht das Ich ihme die handt bieten vnd sein furhaben ins werckh richten wolte, Ich sehe aber darzue keine müglichkeit, wie sie auch bißher im werckh selber erfahren haben' - Moriaen to Hartlib, 14 November 1639, HP 37/47A. This report of a meeting 'five years ago' ties in plausibly enough with Descartes' 'some time' before December 1635.

[134] The response to Descartes in the Hartlib circle was by no means uniformly negative, and his mathematical gifts in particular were generally recognised and admired. But the approach I have outlined was the prevalent one, the more so as time went on. Comenius in particular, after some initial interest, became increasingly hostile to Descartes, whose approach he thought likely to lead to atheism. He wrote a refutation of Descartes and Copernicus which was destroyed in the siege of Leszno (Comenius, 549) and a satirical pamphlet Cartesius cum sua naturali philosophia a mechanicis eversus (Descartes and his natural philosophy overthrown by craftsmen) (1659: Comenius, 593, and see also pp. 640-41).

[135] Protokolle II, 476, no. 947.13.

[136] HP 9/15/3A-B. The date is given, bewilderingly, as 'Ao 1633 Ad 16 19 9b; both '1633' and '16' have been altered, and '19' could debatably be read as '29'. Dury has noted on the back 'Scripsit 19. 9bris (written 19 November)'.

[137] HP 9/15/3A: 'Noribergâ solvi civitatis Iure me frustravi aut liberavi potius'.

[138] 'so hebbe ene tyt lang met t'Bezoardicum maeken besig geweest, en hebbe voor enige daegen aen Monsieur de Bra ontrent 14lb daerof gesonden, om niet alleen de vrienden maer oock andere daermede te [illeg.] […] dat oock een wat profyt van mynen arbeyt quaem dat soude mij incourageren om de Naturæ wonders t'[illeg.]' - Moriaen to van Assche, 6 September 1636, UBA N65c.

[139] For instance Appelius to Hartlib, 12 June 1644, mentioning 'H Morian, vnd andere Medici' ('Herr Moriaen and other physicians') (HP 55/1/8A), Rand to Hartlib, 10 Jan. 1653, HP 62/17/4A, and Hübner[?] to ?, 30 July 1655, HP 63/14/31B.

[140] Moriaen to van Assche, 17 January 1637, UBA N65d.

[141] Moriaen to Worsley, 9 June 1651, HP 9/16/7A. A fuller account of Moriaen's alchemical project and von Zeuel's putative involvement is given below, pp. 226-32

[142] 'haben wir so woll in vnseren gemeinen als meinen priuatsachen so viel zue thun gefunden das Ich auff nichts anderß gedenkhen können' - Moriaen to Hartlib, 2 August 1640, HP 37/66A.

[143] Moriaen's letter of that date to van Assche, UBA N65b.

[144] 'ich mit meiner haußfr. dz mehrertheil an landgutern bekommen habe' - Moriaen to ?, 21 July 1639, HP 37/35A.

[145] Moriaen to Hartlib, 2 August 1640, HP 37/66B.

[146] Moriaen to ?, 21 July 1639, HP 37/35A.

[147] Moriaen to van Assche, 17 Jan. 1637, UBA N65d: 'maeken wy rekenninge tegen t'beginsel of 12 Mey te geliggen God geue tot syns naems eer genadige uytcoomste'.

[148] Ibid.: 'het heeft God belieft myn beminde huysvrouw met de hote van lyfsvrücht te segenen'.

[149] Moriaen to van Assche, 24 Nov. 1635, UBA N65b, with the news that 'het onsen God ook belieft heeft onsen Broeder Adam van Zeuel uyt dese werelt te nehmen ende onsen noch resterenden Broeder Pet. v Z. met de beginseln van malo Eupochondriaco te gesoeken daeraen hy nu over 3 weken te bedde ligt'.

[150] Moriaen to van Assche, 17 Jan. 1637, UBA N65d: 'so lang Monsr: van Zeu: niet getrouwt is so haeken hem niet te verlaeten'.

[151] Protokolle II, 511, no. 989.9. There were no fewer than five witnesses: Abraham de Bra's wife (so Moriaen's sister if this is not a different Abraham de Bra), standing in for Elisabeth de Famars, Maria Mitz, Magdalena Bergens (i.e. Pergens), Maria Hildebier (standing in for the Lauterbachs), and Odilia's brother Peter.

[152] Protokolle II, 480, no. 952.2.

[153] Moriaen to Hartlib, 24 March 1639, HP 37/13B. This was probably John Pell's manuscript 'meditationes de causâ diminutionis magneticæ', a copy of which he sent to Mersenne on 24 Jan. 1640, mentioning that he had earlier sent the original to Hartlib (Correspondance de Mersenne IX, 59). Moriaen did not say in so many words that he had had the piece from Hartlib, but this is the obvious implication.

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