download PDF version: 38.1MB - Global Grey

220 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
was published, and supposing the discovery of the burial-
place to have ante-dated the manifesto by the shortest possible
period, we are brought back to the year 1494, one
year after the birth of Paracelsus, whose books it is supposed
to contain. This point is, of course, conclusive, and
it is unnecessary to comment on the mystery which sur-
rounds the ultimate fate of the corpse of that " godly and
high-illuminated Father,
Brother C. R. C."
Thus it is obvious that the history of Christian Rosen-
creutz is not historically true, and that the Society did not
originate in the manner which is described by the " Fama."
The theorists of the second and third divisions are in
agreement upon several important points, and may, therefore,
be considered together. Most of them unite in seek-
ing the author of the Rosicrucian manifestoes among the
literati of the period. On the one side they consider him a
satirist, or the perpetrator of an imposture
or elaborate
jest ; on the other, they hold him to be the founder of a
secret society, or the mouthpiece of one which was already
in existence, and to which they ascribe a various antiquity
in accordance with their predilections and their knowledge
of the true state of the case. The question of this anti-
quity has been discussed in the last chapter.
Several authors have been suggested, for the most part on
very slender evidence. Some maintain that the manifestoes
were written by Taulerus, the author of the German Theologia,
an obscure writer not to be identified with the author of the
Spiritual Letters, " Institutions Divinae," &c., others by
Luther, others again by Wiegel. Joachim Junge, 1 the cele-
1 This writer is not to be confused with Jung Stilling, whose real,
name was Johannes Heinrich Jung, and who is, perhaps, more celebrated
in England for his works on Pneumatology than is the rector
of Hamburg for his contributions to mathematical science.