The Elizabethans (17 page)

In Elizabethan England one of the ‘wits’ most abundantly ‘enricht with learning’s skill’, and one of the first in England to absorb the ideas of Copernicus, was a Welsh mathematician, priest and magus named John Dee. For him, as for nearly all of his contemporaries, the importance of Copernicus was that he opened the possibility of returning to ancient sources of wisdom, and to systems of thought that many Christians dreaded as pagan.

Modern historians of science see the Copernican revolution as the moment in history when all the old ideas were scrapped. For the Elizabethans, Copernicus provided them with the excuse to revive ideas of the universe that were even older. Aristotle and the Middle Ages were discarded, but not in favour (or for them at least, not yet) of Newton and Hubble, but for the mystic doctrines of Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice-Great Prophet identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, considered by many Renaissance humanists to be the equal of Moses. Copernicus opened the way to ancient sun worship. Trismegistus had regarded the sun as the Visible God, and mathematics, for those such as Copernicus and John Dee, were in alignment with philosophy. Numbers were not merely abstract. They carried meaning, clues about the nature of things.

When, in November 1572, a new star appeared in the Heavens, it seemed – to that age that had only the most primitive observing instruments – like a confirmation of Copernicus’s theory. Dee was in Denmark at the time of its appearing with his friend Tycho Brahe, one of the great Renaissance astronomers. They were in a monastery that was in the process of being purged of its Catholic past, and Brahe had a small laboratory in one of the outhouses. Looking at the bright W of the constellation Cassiopeia, Brahe saw the two bright stars, Schedar and Caph, that form the last upward stroke. He then saw that there was a bright point of light suspended over the second V, equal to Venus, the Evening Star, in brilliance. There, in the middle of the Milky Way, was a new star.

Back in England, the new star was being observed by Dee’s friend and assistant, Thomas Digges. Digges’s
A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes
(1576) contains many long passages of Copernicus rendered into English and was an overt homage to the Polish astronomer, ‘according to the most aunciente doctrine of the
PYTHAGOREANS
, latelye reuiued by
COPERNICVS
and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved’.

Digges and Dee were both from time to time encouraged in their researches by William Cecil – and it was to Cecil that Digges wrote:

I cannot, here, set a limit to again urging, exhorting and admonishing all students of
Celestial Wisdom
with respect to how great and how hoped-for an opportunity has been offered to Earthdwellers of examining whether the
Monstrous System
of Celestial globes . . . has been fully corrected and amended by that divine
Copernicus
of more than human talent, or whether there still remains something to be further considered. This I have considered cannot be done otherwise than through most careful observations, now of this
Most Rare Star
, now of the rest of the wandering stars and through various regions of this dark and obscure
Terrestrial Star
, where, wandering as strangers, we lead, in a short space of time, a life harassed by varied fortunes.
⁵

It has been justly argued that Digges, himself the son of an eminent mathematician, Leonard Digges, was seen at the time as one of the leading English Copernicans. Robert Burton, for instance, in his preface to the
Anatomy of Melancholy
, never fails to mention Digges’s name when he discusses those who believe in the Copernican theory, not just as a mathematical hypothesis, but as a physical reality.
⁶

The new star was visible for a few months and then faded from view – disappearing completely by March 1574. Whether it was a comet or a meteor, with a tail too small to be seen with the naked eye, it is impossible to say. Throughout Europe at the time, opinion was divided between those who were prepared to concede the implications of the new star and those who were not. Conservatives who had not believed, let alone absorbed, the teaching of Copernicus, had to believe that the star had been there all along, and had only now become momentarily visible because condensation on one of the spheres carrying the planets had cleared. Such a view was advanced by Valesius of Covarrubias, Philip II’s physician; in Italy, Girolamo Cardano, an ancient and distinguished mathematician, argued that it was the Star of Bethlehem that had reappeared, full of portent.

Most European astronomers, however, dismissed this view. And that would mean that the universe in which men and women had believed since the time of Aristotle was no longer there. The fixed, enclosed universe, with the Earth at its centre, was – as humanity was slowly about to discover – limitless. All they knew so far was that they were living in a new order.

What we call applied science began as magic; applied science and magic both seek to impose the human will on Nature. To this extent, medicine and the cures of witchcraft both have the same aim. Alchemy might differ from later chemistry in being fuller of chicanery, but it has comparable aims – to transform matter by laboratory experiments.

The Renaissance scholars who looked back to the sun-centred mysteries of Hermes Trismegistus were the ancestors of modern experimental scientists, but it is not surprising that they should also be seen as magicians. Mathematics was regarded as a form of magic. The obsession with alchemy – the turning of base metal into gold – was shared by many a serious academic. Yet the ability to summon up spirits (a skill that in our day is quite distinct from physics and chemistry) was in Elizabethan times a necromantic art that would be half-expected of the mathematician or the astrologer.

When drama emerged as the great art-form of Elizabethan literature, it was not surprising that the scientific preoccupations of the age should be projected onto two mythic figures: Faust and Prospero.

The original Faust was an inconsiderable, fraudulent scholar. Dr Georg Faust was banished as a soothsayer from Ingolstadt in 1527. Dr Faust – ‘the great sodomite and necromancer’ – was refused a safe-conduct by the city of Nuremberg on 10 May 1532. Is he the same as Johannes Faust who was granted his BA in the Faculty of Theology in Heidelberg in 1509?
⁷
In a sense it does not matter. The original Faust(s) laid claim to magic power because of his learning. He was ripe to be turned into a potent symbol of his times; Christopher Marlowe probably read an English translation of Faust’s life in 1588.
⁸
Although Marlowe’s play
Dr Faustus
ends with the protagonist’s supposed damnation – he has sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for forbidden knowledge – the scholar-necromancer is really a hero to Marlowe, whose conquests of knowledge, like Tamburlaine’s conquests of territory in Marlowe’s other (two-part) hit play, wowed audiences in the 1590s with their picture of moral defiance. Marlowe no more expects his audience to succumb to a Christian or moral view of the world, having seen the downfall of Dr Faustus, than the fans of 1970s rock bands would be deterred from a wild way of life by one of their idols taking an overdose or dying a violent death. The terrible end is part of the hero’s daredevil thrill.

Dr Faustus
probably owed something to the character of Dr Dee, about whom all sorts of wild stories circulated from his earliest years, but then, as John Aubrey charitably remarked in his
Brief Lives
, ‘in those dark times, astrologer, mathematician and conjuror were accounted the same things’. In another place, Aubrey says, ‘’Twas had a sin to make a Scrutinie into the Waies of Nature.’
⁹

Aubrey considered Dee ‘a mighty good man’.
¹⁰
He did not deny Dee’s magical powers, or that ‘the Children dreaded him because he was accounted a Conjuror . . .’ ‘Meredith Lloyd . . . told me of John Dee etc., conjuring at a poole in Brecknockshire, and that they found a wedge of Gold; and that they were troubled and indicted as Conjurors at the Assizes; that a mighty storme and tempest was raysed in harvest time, the country people had not known the like.’

When Dee was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a mere nineteen years old, he demonstrated what appeared to be supernatural powers. During a production of Aristophanes’ play
Peace
, Dee laid on some spectacular special effects. In the play, Trygaeus, a vine-dresser, wishes to consult Zeus about the military prospects of his fellow citizens in Athens. He takes a ride on a giant dung-beetle. Dee somehow managed to create just such a flying machine, to the wonder and bewilderment of the Cambridge audience. He had seen such flying automata on his continental travels: ‘for in Nuremberg a fly of iron, being let out of the Artificer’s hand did (as it were) fly about the gates . . . and at length, as though weary, return to his master’s hand again . . .’
¹¹

When Mary Tudor became Queen, Dee was arrested and charged with ‘calculating’, ‘conjuring and witchcraft’, on the grounds that he had drawn up horoscopes for the Queen and for Princess Elizabeth. He managed to avoid being prosecuted, however, even though they deprived him of his living – he was the vicar of Upton-upon-Severn. With an admirable capacity to bob up again when stricken with misfortune, he became chaplain to the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, who masterminded the burning of so many heretics at Smithfield. It is possible that Dee had been planted in this role by Protestants (he had formerly been part of Protector Northumberland’s household). He certainly was involved in espionage in various capacities. He was identified by a double agent as ‘Prideaux’, a Catholic spy. (Did this suggest the name of Jim Prideaux in John Le Carré’s Cold War thriller
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
?)

Queen Elizabeth, always willing to favour her fellow Welsh, had none of her half-sister Mary’s objections to Dee’s alleged activities as a ‘conjuror’. He had been a favoured member of the Dudley entourage in the reign of Edward VI and, with Elizabeth’s accession, Dee returned to favour. He was actually asked to choose the most auspicious date for Elizabeth’s coronation. He selected 15 January 1559, Jupiter then being in Aquarius – which suggested the possible emergence of such great statesmanlike qualities as impartiality, independence and tolerance; and Mars being in Scorpio, which would provide the new ruler with passion and commitment. When he had made this calculation, Dee was taken by Dudley to Whitehall Palace for an audience with the Queen. It took place in the Great Hall, built by Cardinal Wolsey. Dee, a tall Merlin-like figure, with ‘a very faire cleare rosie complexion’ and a long beard, wore ‘a Gowne like an Artist’s gowne, with hanging sleeves, and a slitt’.
¹²
He was led up to the Queen by Robert Dudley and by a leading member of the Taffia, the Earl of Pembroke. She merrily told him that ‘where my brother hath given him a crown, I will give him a noble’,
¹³
a joke that could have meant she intended to pay him a gold coin (worth two silver crowns). It could also have meant she was flirtatiously hinting that she would like to have ennobled him. Dee tells us that his father was a gentleman-server,
antesignanus dapiferorum
, to Henry VIII and in no fewer than three pedigrees he claimed ancestry through the Lord Rhys, Rhys ap Gruffudd to Rhodri Mawri and Coel Hen. If he hoped for preferment from the Crown, Dee was to be largely disappointed. He hoped in vain to become Dean of Gloucester. In old age he was obsessed by his pursuit of a sinecure. His application to become Master of the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester, to this day a refuge for indigent rogues and those of unsound mind, was unsuccessful, and he ended by having to be content with a less lucrative wardenship of a collegiate church in Manchester. Those who wish to cast him in a Faustian mould have had to contrive an end for Dee that was a disgrace, even a ‘hell’, but the truth is that he never fell into disgrace with the Queen. She simply was not as generous to him as she might have been. In the early 1580s she consulted him about the possibility of changing over to the Julian Calendar. He had been asked to give her advice about the new star in 1572; he even acted as one of her medical advisers in 1571 and 1578; and in the 1570s and 1590s he was asked for legal advice about Elizabeth’s titles to foreign lands.
¹⁴

Clearly there always were, and always will be, those for whom Dee’s wizardry was the most interesting thing about him.

Beside Dee’s dabbling with alchemy, his interest in astrology and his fondness for crystal-gazing, we must also remember his friendship with the spurious wizard Edward Kelley, and his claim to have seen angels and summon up spirits. Undoubtedly it is as a wizard that his reputation survives in the scholarly writings of Frances Yates. He is known to have been a hero to the preposterous master of the Dark Arts, Aleister Crowley (self-styled wickedest man in the world), and he probably contributed to the character of Voldemort in the
Harry Potter
stories. He also turns up as a character in Charlie Fletcher’s
Stoneheart
trilogy for children, as a wholly malign worker of black magic.

Yet this is the man to whom Queen Elizabeth gave a modest church living as a clergyman in Manchester, and who as late as August 1592 was having dinner two nights running with Lord Burghley and his sons, Robert and Thomas, mulling over the chances of church preferment. In spite of the ‘jentle answer’ he received from Cecil, there was not much money forthcoming, but the sober, respectable and religious Cecil would never have had dinner with an evil wizard. He would, however, have delighted in the company of Dee the well-travelled scholar, whose lectures on Euclid at ‘Rhemes College’ in Paris had been received by enormous, rapturous audiences; who knew the courts of Bohemia and Poland, and the scholars of many of the most distinguished universities in Europe.