Jacob Boehme (c.1575-1624) and the reception of his writings in the English-speaking world during the 17th century

Later this year, the 17^th of November to be precise, will mark the 400^th anniversary of the death of Jacob Boehme (c.1575–1624). Just as the 300^th anniversary of Boehme’s death was commemorated in a variety of ways, so I expect the 400^th anniversary will be observed too. Perhaps there will even be an academic conference. Beforehand, however, I intend to have completed my own contribution. This is a book on the reception of Boehme’s writings throughout the English-speaking world. It has been far too long in the making and is now far too large (currently just over 125,000 words of text) to likely interest anyone except for a handful of specialist readers. So what follows is a summary of the main arguments.

Terracotta medal issued in 1924 to celebrate Boehme’s life and writings

It is fair to say that there have been few more polarizing figures in early modern religious history than Boehme. He has been regarded as a divinely illuminated genius by his most devoted disciples; indeed, as ‘the greatest and most famous of all Theosophists in the world’, ‘the father of German philosophy’ and, by no less a figure than the cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), as ‘one of the greatest allegorists’.  Yet Boehme has also been reviled in equal measure by his fiercest critics as an incomprehensible, ignorant heretic.

Bronze statue of Boehme sitting on a stool with a Bible in his left hand; Görlitz, 1898

According to the reckoning of his first biographer and admirer the Silesian nobleman Abraham von Franckenberg (1593–1652), Boehme was the author of thirty works, many of which are extremely long and difficult. These were all written in German, although several have Latin titles. Whether by choice or circumstance, some writings remained unfinished: notably Boehme’s first and most famous book ‘Morgenröthe im Aufgang’ or ‘Aurora’.  Remarkably, very little has been lost with the exception of some minor treatises. In addition, much of Boehme’s extensive correspondence survives for the period from January 1618 to June 1624.

Photograph (1923) showing Boehme’s possible place of birthplace in Alt-Seidenberg (Stary Zawidów, Poland)

A Lutheran by birth, by formative religious instruction and steadfastly at his death, Boehme’s major theological concerns were with the nature of creation and how it came into being; the origin and presence of evil; and the attainment of salvation through a process of inward spiritual regeneration and rebirth. Nonetheless, influenced initially by the teachings of Paracelsus (1493–1541) and the Spiritual Reformers Caspar Schwenckfeld (1490–1561) and Valentin Weigel (1533–1588), as well as by popular alchemical and astrological texts, and then, following the clandestine circulation of his first incomplete book in manuscript, a widening social network of friends, learned correspondents and noble patrons, Boehme began developing certain heretical views that were furiously denounced by a local clergyman named Gregor Richter (1560–1624).

Jacob Boehme before Gregor Richter; Joseph Mulder [after Jan Luyken] (1686) [Rijksmuseum collections]

These included his understanding of the Trinity, which he was accused of denying through the introduction of a fourth figure, Sophia (symbolising the Noble Virgin of Divine Wisdom); his explanations for the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels (constituting a first fall preceding the second fall of humanity from paradise); Adam’s prelapsarian androgynous nature; the existence of seven qualities (dry, sweet, bitter, fire, love, sound, and corpus); and the three principles which corresponded to the dark world (God the Father), the light world (God the Son), and our temporal visible world (the Holy Spirit). Moreover, having settled and established himself as a shoemaker at Görlitz in Upper Lusatia, and writing against a backdrop of vibrant scientific, astronomical and medical enquiry, damaging regional political struggles, religious polemic, apocalyptic speculation and, from 1618, the earliest phase of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), Boehme interposed himself – ignorantly and presumptuously according to his better educated critics – in important doctrinal debates over the nature of free will and the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper by expounding an eirenic, anticlerical message. This culminated in his announcement of an impending Great Reformation, a new age of love, patience, peace and joy.

17th century Görlitz, with Boehme’s homes located on the east bank of the River Neisse

For Boehme’s detractors within the Holy Roman Empire it was incredible that a supposedly illiterate common man could have such a profound and extraordinary knowledge of God and Nature. Clearly what was at stake for them was an unwelcome plebeian challenge to Scholastic learning, doctrinal orthodoxy, and the jealously guarded clerical monopoly of biblical interpretation. Accordingly, in this struggle for interpretative mastery they attempted to weaken a pronounced hagiographic tendency that praised Boehme as the blessed recipient of divine illumination. And they did this through charges of arrogance, ignorance, heresy and presumption, not to mention irrationality and incomprehensibility.

The original title-page of Boehme’s ‘Morgen Röte im auffgang’, i.e. ‘Aurora’ (1612) [Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, MS Qu. 62]

A few months before his premature death on 17 November 1624, Boehme prophesied that although his writings would be discarded by his fellow countrymen foreign nations would joyfully take them up. This prediction was largely borne out during the seventeenth century as Boehme’s works were ‘vilified and cast away’ in his homeland but painstakingly published in Dutch and English translations. Indeed, between 1645 and 1662 most of Boehme’s treatises and the majority of his letters were printed in English translation at London. Moreover, Morgan Llwyd (1619–1659) of Gwynedd rendered two shorter pieces from English into Welsh in 1655. Among Boehme’s followers there circulated a garbled story that King Charles I had been the main patron of this venture before his execution on 30 January 1649. Some also maintained, probably correctly, that after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in May 1660 the remaining works were brought out under the auspices of Philip Herbert (1619–1669), fifth Earl of Pembroke. In their eyes this tradition of royal and aristocratic support gave the undertaking prestige. Yet it simplifies developments, obscuring the involvement of a number of people with common aims. For actually there were three overlapping phases.

During the first phase from Boehme’s death until the outbreak of the English Civil War in August 1642, not a word of Boehme had yet been translated from German into English. Unsurprisingly, therefore, English speakers interested in Boehme’s writings were – with one known exception – foreigners, emigrants or those who had travelled abroad. As might be expected, these people were not monolingual but usually had command of Latin and sometimes German and Dutch as well. Motivations for learning about and engaging with Boehme’s texts varied widely. For some the goal was evidently to achieve Protestant church unity, or at least to be forewarned about the nature of potential sectarian dissent. For others the impulse derived from a new spirit of prophecy that had sprung forth during the Thirty Years’ War – especially following the initial victories of the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632). For others still, their concern was to accommodate Boehme within Paracelsian, alchemical-medical and Rosicrucian frameworks. Finally, there was also interest in Boehme among certain Walloons, Mennonites and Socinian sympathisers, as well as among owners and readers of Caspar Schwenckfeld – several of whom had contacts in England. Consequently, it is important to emphasise that Boehme was not read in isolation but as part of wider interests and agendas.

Gustavus Adolphus, frontispiece to The New Star of the North, shining Upon the Victorious King of Sweden (London, 1632)

During the second phase, that is from about 1643 onwards, English manuscript translations were made primarily from German and to a lesser extent Dutch and Latin versions of Boehme’s works. Most of these texts were available in editions published at Amsterdam financially supported initially by the Silesian knight Johannes von Sack (fl.1618–fl.1631), and thereafter particularly by the merchant Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland (1587–1648). These English translations, a few of which were anonymous, circulated privately in much the same way as did other mystical, spiritual and prophetic writings during the period. Indeed, several examples survive of Boehme’s The Way to Christ and the latter part of his Mysterium Magnum. Comparing the manuscripts indicates that despite some variations these translations were done by the same person but copied by different scribal hands.

Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson C 763, Jacob Boehme, ‘The way to Christ comprehended’

As for the translator, this was John Sparrow (1615–1670), an Essex-born, Cambridge-educated lawyer, treasurer and collector of prize goods, not to mention a diarist, polyglot and polymath. Sparrow regarded Boehme’s difficult texts as both a pathway for individual salvation and as a balm to heal the nation’s sectarian wounds. And though he feared making such things known in his native language to ‘so many various minds, as are now sprung up’, Sparrow nonetheless contented himself with the knowledge that his public-spirited efforts might provide ‘much comfort’ to ‘troubled doubting’ souls. Furthermore, Sparrow hoped that an assortment of powerful military and governmental figures with whom he was closely connected would use their influence to advance his goal of religious toleration.

John Sparrow (1615–1670), ‘lover of the theosophy and philosophy of Jacob Boehme, German’; engraving by David Loggan (1659)

During the third and final phase there was an organised scheme for publishing the extant corpus of Boehme’s writings in English. Here the contribution of intermediaries, patrons, translators, biographers, printers, publishers and booksellers was crucial. Indeed, these texts were copied, transmitted, translated and issued in a predominantly volatile environment which witnessed major upheavals in the publishing trade – including the temporary breakdown of pre-publication censorship. Moreover, the publication of Boehme’s works must be situated within another context, specifically the dissemination of continental alchemical, astrological, millenarian and mystical writings during a turbulent period of English history.

Altogether twenty different books – some containing several titles – by the so-called ‘Teutonic Philosopher’ were issued in English versions at London between 1645 and 1662. Sparrow acknowledged the translation of ten of these publications. He also translated one or more works in collaboration with his cousin John Elliston the younger (c.1625–1652) and may in addition have translated several more books anonymously. While much of the financial cost was met by Sparrow and Elliston, it is clear that Samuel Hartlib (c.1600–1662), a Prussian émigré resident in London, and members of his circle donated their time and effort. Their motive is also discernible: although it had gone unheeded by many of his compatriots, Boehme’s announcement of the dawn of a new reformation chimed with the vision of universal reformation advanced by Hartlib’s circle. In the same vein, Boehme’s principal English translators hoped their efforts would be rewarded with the settlement of religious controversies and the disappearance of sects and heresies.

It was, however, to prove a vain hope. Instead of the promised ‘Day of Pentecost’, when the ‘true sense and meaning of all Languages’ would be united into one tongue, there was a new Babel. Instead of doctrinal unanimity there was discord. Indeed, Boehme’s readers responded in largely unforeseen ways: sometimes with enthusiasm but on other occasions with exasperation, ambivalence and even revulsion. A handful were convicted of blasphemy, others formed spiritual communities, while others still fulminated against what they regarded as Boehme’s incomprehensible nonsense and vile falsehoods. All the same, engagement with Boehme’s teachings was more extensive at this crucial moment in English history than has usually been recognised. Nor was his influence either straightforward or always easy to untangle from the wider tradition of continental mystical, prophetic and visionary writing that he epitomised.

In short, although the essential narrative of the English Revolution of 1641–1660 would have been the same whether or not Boehme’s writings had been translated, a focus on political and military developments would be to misplace the key to his significance. Rather, Boehme’s influence in mid-seventeenth century England can be seen in alchemical experimentation and attempts to create universal medicines within the laboratory; in almanacs and astrological predictions; in mystical thought, notably speculation about the creation of the universe, the nature of angels and the fall of Adam; in the literary expression of prophetic experience; in the development of heretical doctrines about God’s presence within all living things, the nature of the soul and the denial of an external heaven and hell; in spiritual contemplation and psychological comfort from melancholic temptations such as suicide; in utopian literature through his vision of a new age; in attempts to regulate sexual conduct through the imposition of celibacy; and in the enrichment of the English language through the introduction of neologisms.

And that is not all. For both during the Revolution and afterwards, there was notable interest in Boehme’s writings among the Cambridge Platonists and their associates. Although this anachronistic name is slightly misleading, it remains helpful in describing a loosely configured intellectual circle largely associated with Cambridge University which was characterised by a shared readership of Plato, Plotinus and other ancient philosophers. Furthermore, while identification with this group has to some extent been determined retrospectively there is, nevertheless, a modern consensus as to who constituted the core – mainly scholars connected with Emmanuel and Christ’s College – and who was on the periphery. It is noteworthy therefore, that titles by Boehme are recorded in the libraries of the well-known Platonists Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Peter Sterry (1613–1672) and John Worthington (1618–1671), Master of Jesus College. Cudworth liked the ‘practical’ parts of Boehme ‘very well’, but did not approve of Boehme’s ‘Revelations’ unless they were to be explained by way of reason. Sterry for his part could not decide whether Jesus had appeared to Boehme in a glorious vision, or if Boehme had been tricked by a dark Satanic minion in the guise of an angel of light. Yet Sterry confessed to his correspondent Morgan Llwyd that he had profited from reading Boehme, meeting with ‘rich Depths, Sweet Heights’ in these writings, which seemed to him to have an ‘Authority & Glory’ in them beyond that of the ‘scribes & Pharisees’. By contrast, Worthington believed that Boehme had been wrapped up in the ‘fooleries of enthusiasm’ but still felt bound to praise his writings – along with those of Thomas à Kempis (c.1380–1471) and the German Dominican Johannes Tauler (c.1300–1361) – for the ‘savoury truths’ he discerned in amongst ‘the stubble and wood and hay’.

Christ’s College, Cambridge

But it was Henry More (1614–1687), Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge who engaged at greatest length with Boehme. According to More, Boehme was a ‘holy and good’ man whose imagination was so preoccupied with ‘divine things’ that he could not (save for a miracle) avoid becoming an ‘Enthusiast’. Expanding upon his initial impressions in a ‘Critique of Teutonic Philosophy’ (c.1670), a response to five questions likely posed by his patron Anne, Viscountess Conway (1631–1679), More acknowledged that while Boehme was ‘not infallibly and constantly inspired’, it was nonetheless admirable and extraordinary that ‘such an uneducated man should so manifestly stumble upon the main outlines of the ancient wisdom which was really inspired’.

Henry More (1614–1687)

Turning to the so-called religious ‘radicals’ (another anachronistic label), here our discussion of Boehme’s reception needs to be situated within the parameters of four broader questions. Firstly, were the heterodox religious movements, communities and individuals that emerged so rapidly during the English Revolution predominantly the product of either a native tradition of militant Protestantism – that is a puritan ‘underground’ immersed in doctrinal disputes, antinomian experimentation and apocalyptic thinking – or a consequence of the loosely co-ordinated project to translate and disseminate writings by continental European Anabaptists, alchemists, astrologers, mystics, spiritual reformers and radical theologians? Secondly, can Boehme’s direct influence be disentangled from the wider tradition of theosophic and prophetic writing that he epitomised? Thirdly, in those instances where Behmenist resonances can be identified definitively, how were his texts received and adapted within contexts for which they had plainly not been intended? Fourthly, in seeking to demonstrate intellectual influence, has too much emphasis been placed on textual transmission at the expense of more intangible oral diffusion?

Although several prominent scholars have suggested that the Digger leader Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) was influenced to some degree by Boehme it nonetheless seems certain, to my mind, that Winstanley did not consult any of Boehme’s works while writing his own. And while it is impossible to state definitively that a person never read, heard or discussed a particular text, it appears very probable that Winstanley was not influenced by Boehme’s teachings directly, or indeed that he engaged with or reacted against them. The disparities between them are far too great. Thus Winstanley never quotes, paraphrases or alludes to Boehme. His prose style also differs from the way in which Boehme’s translators rendered him into English. Nor does Winstanley adopt any of the neologisms introduced by these translators. Absent from his texts is a vocabulary of technical alchemical, astrological, cosmological and soteriological terms found in Boehme. Boehme’s unmediated influence on Winstanley can therefore be discounted. Moreover, if Winstanley did appropriate and adapt some of Boehme’s ideas then this would have been through oral transmission or by engaging with other texts from the same milieu. This is not surprising. Winstanley was not a university trained scholar or clergymen, nor a rich merchant but a former bankrupt with a financially modest if settled existence when he began writing. So the likelihood is that during the period of Winstanley’s literary activities (1648 to 1652) he possessed only a handful of printed works, or at most a modest library intermittently supplemented with books borrowed from friends and relations.

With regard to the Ranters, there is no mention of Boehme in the extant writings of those individuals whom sensible historians agree to have been Ranters. Unlike the Quakers, with whom they would be associated, there is a significant and almost total silence among contemporaries concerning the Ranters’ alleged descent from the teachings of Paracelsus, Weigel and Boehme. Nonetheless, given that several prominent Ranters knew people who read Boehme and indeed had their works published by Giles Calvert (1615–1663), who also issued several works by Boehme in English translation, one would have expected the ‘Teutonic Philosopher’ to have had a greater influence on their writings. Yet, with one important exception, there is no evidence indicating that any Ranter read Boehme or made use of his ideas. That exception, however, was the notorious Abiezer Coppe (1619–1672).

Abiezer Coppe, ‘An Additional and Preambular Hint, – As a general Epistle written by ABC’, in Richard Coppin, Divine Teachings (London: Giles Calvert, 1649), preface

There are several possible explanations for this. Firstly, by the time of the Ranters’ demise the bulk of Boehme’s writings had still to be published in English translation. Secondly, Boehme’s potentially powerful albeit somewhat strange and incomprehensible ideas were disseminated gradually; initially having a core reception among continental Protestant exiles, university-educated ministers, lawyers and army officers, rather than artisans turned prophets and preachers. Thirdly, aside from Coppe the Ranters were not trained scholars. As itinerant evangelisers with relatively meagre finances the likelihood is that they possessed, at most, modest libraries intermittently supplemented with books borrowed from friends and relations. What texts they carried with them would therefore probably have been pocketable editions. Indeed, the absence of a demonstrable and sustained Ranter readership for Boehme was actually – at least in this instance – in keeping with the audience his English translators envisaged.

As for the Quakers, the question of Boehme’s influence during the formative years of the movement and the reasons why many of the Religious Society of Friends (as they later called themselves) eventually repudiated his teachings has been long debated. Thus on the one hand, it has been claimed that ‘the Quaker spirit and the spirit of Behmen were one’. On the other, however, it has been strongly argued that Quakerism grew out of ‘the soil and climate of the time’; that while much in radical Puritanism was in sympathy with Quaker practice, there was something in Quakerism contrary even to the radical Puritans’ beliefs. Quakerism was therefore explained as the product of English contexts – a ‘spiritual climate’, and studies of Quaker origins against a largely continental background of Anabaptism, spiritualism and mysticism dismissed as primarily of academic interest. Consequently, within the framework of this greater debate, Boehme’s influence upon the Quakers was pronounced specious.

All the same, polemicists certainly went to some length to provide contemporary readers with a genealogy of the Quakers. Accordingly, these hostile accounts linked the Quakers to their supposed forebears; that is the followers of Paracelsus, Valentin Weigel, Hendrick Niclaes (1502?–1580?), founder of a heretical sect known as the Family of Love, Jacob Boehme and the rest of the ‘fanatics’ in Germany. Consequently, it appears to my mind both that the early Quakers engagement with Boehme’s writings and their association in contemporaries’ minds with his teachings was more extensive than has usually been acknowledged by modern scholars. For although only a minority of early Quaker printed texts and extant manuscripts show familiarity with Boehme’s terms or doctrines, nonetheless among those that were influenced by Boehme were several important figures in the British Isles, Europe, the West Indies and North America at a time when Quakerism was taking shape. It is also significant that several of Boehme’s Quakers readers became apostates or schismatics; some were active outside England; and others still were foreigners. Ultimately though, the reasons for why many who first became convinced of Quakerism turned away from the ‘Teutonic Philosopher’ – as they did from other authors too – seem clear: the marginalization of dissenting voices; doctrinal differences; silent meetings; and a preference for Friends’ plain style over Boehme’s abstruse notions.

Jacob Böhme, Het Mysterium Magnum (Amsterdam: Jacob Claus, 1700)

Moving next to Boehme’s reception among those preoccupied with alchemy and astrology, a number of whom were also medical practitioners, here Boehme’s writings must be situated within another overlapping context. Namely, the contemporary reception of texts by Paracelsus, Jean Baptiste van Helmont (d.1644) and others in what constituted a challenge to traditional medical thought, itself largely based on the teachings of ancient authorities such as Galen. Although these disparate readers (who included university-trained physicians, faith healers, and botanists) responded in unsurprisingly diverse ways, their engagement with Boehme’s writings nonetheless illustrates their shared desire to attain a common goal. This was to hasten the onset of the millennium or advance the cause of universal reformation by endeavouring to unlock the divine and natural secrets they believed were hidden within the Books of Scripture and Nature. Moreover, in their quest to reveal these mysteries they combined religious devotion as well as alchemical and astrological lore with advances in anatomical knowledge, thereby laying the foundations for developments in the fields of modern chemistry and medical science.

Finally, a few words about Jane Lead (1624–1704), whose carefully crafted autobiography concealed a more radical past than has been supposed. She was an associate of one of Boehme’s foremost seventeenth-century English interpreters John Pordage (1607–1681) and herself an important reader of Boehme. In addition, Lead was among the most prolific published female authors of the long eighteenth century. Besides her extensive spiritual diaries, theological treatises, epistles and some verse, during the last decade of her eighty-year life Lead became the centre of an extensive correspondence network stretching from Pennsylvania to the Electorate of Saxony. Yet as her son-in-law and amanuensis Francis Lee (1661–1719) conceded, outside a small community of believers Lead’s writings were largely ignored in her own country. Instead they enjoyed a widespread if mixed continental reception among an audience of assorted Spiritualists, Behmenists and Pietists. Even so, during the last phase of her life from 1696 to 1704, Lead was positioned at the forefront of the Philadelphian Society.

Taking their name from Philadelphia (‘brotherly love’), the sixth of the seven churches in Asia Minor (Revelation 1:11, 3:7–13), Lead’s little band of millenarian supporters intended to warn and prepare prospective believers of the coming Philadelphian age through a flurry of publications. Yet this co-ordinated publicity campaign contributed to the alienation of a number of sympathisers who preferred obscurity to notoriety. As for Lead, she died at Hoxton (London) on 8 August 1704 aged eighty. Her body was interred in the nonconformist burial ground at Bunhill Fields. Nonetheless, the Philadelphian movement would be reborn, reinvigorated by the arrival of the Camisards (‘French Prophets’) at London in 1706. But that too would ultimately end with personality clashes, dissension, fragmentation, disappointment, ridicule and failure.

There is much more to say, of course, particularly about Boehme’s reception in the British Isles during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here mention should be made of Boehme’s readership among some Freemasons and certain early followers of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772); not to mention such diverse figures as Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649–1728), George Cheyne (1671–1743), William Law (1686–1761), John Byrom (1692–1763), William Blake (1757–1827), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859). But that is a discussion, and indeed a book, for another occasion.