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THE CASE OFJOHANN VALENTIN ANDREAS. 221
brated philosopher of the seventeenth century, has secured
several partisans. He was born at Lubeck in 1587, and
became anM.A. of Giessen in 1609. At the very period
when the "Fama Fraternitatis" first appeared, about 1614,
he was holding numerous conferences with his friends on
the methods of hastening the progress of philosophy, but
his plans are supposed to have been without any immediate
result. Subsequently, he sought to establish at Rostock an
"
but the
academy for the advancement of natural sciences ;
rumour spread that this project concealed some evil designs,
and people went so far as to accuse him of being one of the
chiefs of the famous order of the Brothers of the Red-Cross,
and he was forced to renounce a plan whose execution could
only have had good results for his adopted country." 1 He
became rector of the University of Hamburg, and died of
apoplexy, September 23, 1657. He was the author of " Geo-
metria Empirica," " Harmonica Theoretica," &c., and ap-
pears to have been wholly unconnected with the alchemical
pursuits of the period. A secretary of the Court of Heidelberg
(according to Heidegger, the biographer of Johannes
Ludovicus Fabricius) being, it is supposed, in the secret, is
said to have confirmed in conversation the current report
that Junge was the founder of the Fraternity and the writer
of the "Fama Fraternitatis." 5 No reference is made to this
matter in the " Historia Vitse et Mortis Joachimi Jungii
Mathematici summi ceteraque Incomparabilis Philosophi,"
1 " Biographic Universelle," s.v. Joachim Junge.
2 In the "Acta Eruditorum Lipsise," 1698, 4to, p. 172, there is
"
Natus est Jo. Ludovicus Fabricius Sca-
the following passage:
phulsi, Helvetiorum Pago primario, die 29 Julii anni seculi hujus trigesimi
secundi, patre Jo. Fabricio anno 1630 vi externa e Palatinatu
in exilium ejecto, et a Scaphusanis promtissime recepto. Fuit vir
ille sic satis excultus, quique ut Fabricius noster faniiliari in ser-