Friday, October 05, 2007
MORE FRANCES YATES
In THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE, Yates devotes chapters to the impact of occultism on the literature of the time. A few interesting ideas are presented from that viewpoint.
Those of you who were around when I blogged on the beliefs of Hebrew Catholic Athol Bloomer might remember that British Israelism was a part of those blogs. I was astonished to discover that Yates also mentions British Israelism in her discussion of Spenser's poem THE FAERIE QUEEN, a poem written to honor Queen Elizabeth I. She writes:
The work of Francesco Giorgi will not alone account for the inspiration of THE FAERIE QUEEN; I have been making enormous omissions. Though Giorgi has chapters on the Just Empire of the Prince, and on the rule of champions (or knights), he naturally has nothing about the sacred British-Imperial descent of the Tudors and its associations with Arthurian chivalry, so important an element in Spenser's poem. The Giorgi influence must somehow have merged with an Arthurian-British element to form a kind of "British Israel' mystique. Such a linkage would be quite possible in the highly charged atmosphere of sacred destiny, of religious mission, with which Elizabethan Englishmen maintained their morale in their dangerously isolated position. And it seems obvious that the circle whence such ideas could have emanated can only have been the circle of John Dee.
Dee was a Christian Cabalist and a British imperialist. (pp 121-122)
John Dee, author of the MONAS, is considered to be the source of Rosicrucianism, and so Yates continues with this line of thought a couple of pages later:
The label, in terms of European trends, which seems to me most applicable to THE FAERIE QUEENE is 'Rosicrucian', the movement representing the late form of Renaissance Magia and Cabala, of which Dee had been an exponent and which he had been preaching on the continent whilst Spenser was writing his poem. It is not for nothing that the poem opens with Red Cross and Una (the MONAS). German Rosicrucian writers of the early seventeenth century were aware of deep-rooted connections with Dee's MONAS... (p. 127)
Recall that it was John Dee who first proposed a language, Enochian, which could be used to speak with angels, and that his prophet Edward Kelly trance channeled what Dee believed were angels.
Yates' next chapter following that charge of Rosicrucianism in Elizabethan literature is titled "Elibethan England and the Jews." She opens with the following:
We have been thinking about a Christianised Jewish influence, about Christian Cabala which was so important an element in the Renaissance tradition descended from Ficino and Pico. We have argued that there was a strong influence of Renaissance Christian Cabala in Elizabethan England, adapted to the outlook of Elizabethan religious imperialism. Now a question arises...were there any Jews in Elizabethan England, and if there were any, what would their attitude have been to the Christian imitation of Jewish mysticism in Christian Cabala?
Attempting to answer her own question she speculates:
A fierce persecution of the Jews in Spain and Portugal gave rise to the phenomenon of the 'marrano', a term of contempt used in those countries of the crypto-Jew, who, under an exterior of pretended conformity to the ruling religion, secretly preserved his Judaism. The only form of life which made it possible for Sephardic, or Spanish, Jews to survive in what had hitherto been their homeland was to live under a mask of pretended Christianity....The extraordinary heroism of the Sephardic Jews in the face of the persecutions of the Inquisition which went on in Spain and Portugal, even into the late seventeenth century, is one of the most remarkable records in the history of human endurance. (pp 128-129)
In Elizabethan England the situation was that an influence of Christian Cabala was present at court and in learned circles in a country in which Jews were, officially, not allowed to exist. Yet we hear, unofficially, that two Jewish uncles of Michel de Montaigne, Martin and Francesco Lopez, were at one time present in the marrano colony in London.
The question arises as to whether the adoption of Christian Cabala might have been a possible compromise for the marrano in England. A good many Christian Cabalists on the continent were converted Jews. Giorgi's DE HARMONIA MUNDI, with its 'Judaising' tendency, might have provided a bridge to conversion for the English marrano. (pp 131-132)
Were there any Jews in Elizabethan England? The answer is that there certainly were, though probably not very many. If they maintained the practices of their religion, this could only have been done in the utmost secrecy. They would have to have been crypto-Jews, marranos, publicly professing the public form of Christianity in England.
What would their attitude have been to the Elizabethan form of Christian Cabala? This is, of course, impossible to answer with any degree of precision now, nor would an open answer have been possible at the time. Yet it can be pointed out that Elizabethan England was a power which resisted the persecutors, and that the Elizabethan imperial reform included Christian Cabala as an ingredient of the Elizabeth cult, perhaps making possible for a patriotic English Jew an easy transition to the religion of his adopted country. (p. 134)
It's an interesting perspective. How much Jewish influence lies behind Rosicrucianism, and how much Christian influence? Perhaps there is no way to know, but there is no doubt that John Dee and the Christian Cabalists had an impact on Dee's time.
It is easy to see how the Jewish plan of self-salvation could have morphed into the Masonic plan of self-salvation. The similarities between Kabbalah and Freemasonry are striking. It is fairly easy to trace Freemasonry back to John Dee and the Rosicrucians. The point of entry of Freemasonry onto the world stage is England and Scotland. Could Freemasonry have been the brain-child of crypto Jews--merranos--who were trying to survive in a world that rejected them wherever they turned? That question is purely speculative on my part. I have found no evidence for it so far.
