Related Research Articles
Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the House of Habsburg.
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438). Stylistic analysis has indicated the manuscript may have been composed in Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The origins, authorship, and purpose of the manuscript are still debated, but currently scholars lack the translation(s) and context needed to both properly entertain or eliminate any of the possibilities. Hypotheses range from a script for a natural language or constructed language, an unread code, cypher, or other form of cryptography, or perhaps a hoax, reference work, glossolalia or work of fiction.
Enochian is an occult constructed language—said by its originators to have been received from angels—recorded in the private journals of John Dee and his colleague Edward Kelley in late 16th-century England. Kelley was a scryer who worked with Dee in his magical investigations. The language is integral to the practice of Enochian magic.
Paracelsus, born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance.
A lost literary work is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia, produced of which no surviving copies are known to exist, meaning it can be known only through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from the classical world, although it is increasingly used in relation to modern works. A work may be lost to history through the destruction of an original manuscript and all later copies.
Sir Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot, was an English Renaissance occultist and scryer. He is known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to see spirits or angels in a "shew-stone" or mirror, which John Dee so valued, Kelley also said that he possessed the secret of transmuting base metals into gold, the goal of alchemy, as well as the philosopher's stone itself.
Enochian magic is a system of Renaissance magic developed by John Dee and Edward Kelley and adopted by more modern practitioners. The origins of this esoteric tradition are rooted in documented collaborations between Dee and Kelley, encompassing the revelation of the Enochian language and script, which Dee wrote were delivered to them directly by various angels during their mystical interactions. Central to the practice is the invocation and command of various spiritual beings.
Raphael Sobiehrd-Mnishovsky of Sebuzin and of Horstein was a Bohemian lawyer and writer. He held various secretarial, diplomatic, and judicial posts under Rudolf II, Mathias, Ferdinand II, and Ferdinand III, under whom Raphael was the attorney-general.
Jacobus Sinapius or Jacobus Horcicky, later granted the title "de Tepenec", was a Bohemian pharmacist and personal doctor of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. His latinized name Sinapius is a translation of his family name Hořčický, which means "mustard" in Czech.
Gerhard Dorn was a Belgian philosopher, translator, alchemist, physician and bibliophile.
Wipo of Burgundy was a priest, poet and chronicler. He was a chaplain to the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II and may have acted as a tutor to his son Henry III, to whom he dedicated a number of works. His biography of Conrad II, entitled Gesta Chuonradi II imperatoris, is a key source for Conrad's reign. The well-known musical sequence, Victimae paschali laudes is often attributed to him, though its authenticity remains uncertain.
The Book of Soyga, also titled Aldaraia, is a 16th-century Latin treatise on magic, one copy of which was owned by the Elizabethan scholar John Dee. After Dee's death, the book was thought lost until 1994, when two manuscripts were located in the British Library and the Bodleian Library, under the title Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor, by Dee scholar Professor Deborah Harkness. The Sloane MS 8 version is also described as Tractatus Astrologico Magicus, though both versions differ only slightly.
John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a political advisor, he advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a "British Empire", a term he is credited with coining.
Renaissance magic was a resurgence in Hermeticism and Neoplatonic varieties of the magical arts which arose along with Renaissance humanism in the 15th and 16th centuries CE. During the Renaissance period, magic and occult practices underwent significant changes that reflected shifts in cultural, intellectual, and religious perspectives. C. S. Lewis, in his work on English literature, highlighted the transformation in how magic was perceived and portrayed. In medieval stories, magic had a fantastical and fairy-like quality, while in the Renaissance, it became more complex and tied to the idea of hidden knowledge that could be explored through books and rituals. This change is evident in the works of authors like Spenser, Marlowe, Chapman, and Shakespeare, who treated magic as a serious and potentially dangerous pursuit.
Helisaeus Roeslin or Helisäus Röslin was a German physician and astrologer who adopted a geoheliocentric model of the universe. Roeslin attended the University of Tübingen in order to become a physician. After becoming a physician Roeslin became very interested in astrology as well as predicting when the second coming of Christ would occur. He was one of five observers who concluded that the Great Comet of 1577 was located beyond the Moon. His representation of the comet, described as "an interesting, though crude, attempt," was among the earliest and was highly complex. Roeslin also came to the conclusion independently that it was the Sun not the Earth that was center of the Solar System. Today Helisaeus Roeslin is best remembered for his controversies and involvement with geo-heliocentric world systems and for writing books about astronomy. Some of his works consist of a Ratio Studiorum et operum, the Tabella, and De opere Dei creationis.
Hermann Adam Widemann was a German-born American businessman, judge and politician.
Adam Haslmayr was a German writer, who was the first commentator of the Rosicrucian Manifestos. He called the revelation of Paracelsus the "Theophrastia Sancta".
A presentation miniature or dedication miniature is a miniature painting often found in illuminated manuscripts, in which the patron or donor is presented with a book, normally to be interpreted as the book containing the miniature itself. The miniature is thus symbolic, and presumably represents an event in the future. Usually it is found at the start of the volume, as a frontispiece before the main text, but may also be placed at the end, as in the Vivian Bible, or at the start of a particular text in a collection.
Polygraphia nova et universalis ex combinatoria arte directa is a 1663 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was one of Kircher's most highly regarded works and his only complete work on the subject of cryptography, although he made passing references to the topic elsewhere. The book was distributed as a private gift to selected European rulers, some of who also received an arca steganographica, a presentation chest containing wooden tallies used to encrypt and decrypt codes.
References
- ↑ Philip Neal. "Surviving alchemical manuscripts of Rudolph II".
- 1 2 3 4 Ole Peter Grell (1998). Paracelsus. p. 163. ISBN 9004111778.
- ↑ Guzy, Stefan (2022). "Book Transactions of Emperor Rudolf II, 1576–1612: New Findings on the Earliest Ownership of the Voynich Manuscript" (PDF). CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 3313. Archived (PDF) from the original on 10 January 2023. Retrieved 10 January 2023.
- ↑ René Zandbergen (2017). "The history of the Voynich MS".