CHAPTER 20
This phase of my quest had begun in Wales after I saw what seemed to be ‘Rosy-cross’ symbols on certain memorial stones. Yet these stones, we know, were carved long before the 17th century when, as we have seen, the so-called Rosicrucian Brotherhood announced its existence. To recap, that announcement involved the publication, initially in German, of several short pamphlets. The first of these, the Fama Rosicrucitatis , or ‘Fame of the Rosicrucians’, was first published in 1614, but appears to have been written in about 1610. Together with a sequel called the Confessio , it claimed that there existed a hitherto secret brotherhood of Christian initiates whose intention was to bring about a spiritual and scientific revolution. The symbol of the Brotherhood was a crucified rose, emblematic of both Jesus Christ and of the alleged founder of their order, who enigmatically styled himself Christian Rosencreutz, which is German for ‘Christian Rosy-cross’.
The publication of these pamphlets, which were soon translated and printed in all the major languages of Europe, caused an uproar. Some people, mostly intellectuals from the Protestant north of Europe, hailed the secretive brothers as Masters of Wisdom. These supporters not only wanted to hear more about CRC’s proposed programme of reform, but were keen to be initiated into the Brotherhood themselves. At the same time, on the other side of the religious divide, the rulers of France, Spain and other Catholic countries denounced the movement as subversive; they ordered that loyal subjects should seek out these ‘brothers’ and turn them in to the established authorities. As heretics, they would then be subjected to the full rigours of the Inquisition.
That may have been their desire, but, as it turned out, the brothers proved to be as elusive as the Loch Ness monster. For although there were some relatively well-known authors such as Robert Fludd and Michael Maier, who claimed to be Rosicrucians, in reality this was an aspiration rather than the truth. In any case, as these authors lived in England or some other Protestant state, they were out of reach of the Catholic authorities. Eventually, on both sides of the argument, the consensus became that the Rosicrucian furore was no more than an elaborate hoax.
As I have written extensively about all this in my earlier work London: A New Jerusalem, I won’t say much more here. However, one relevant point of interest that can be extrapolated from the pamphlets themselves is that Christian Rosencreutz, if he actually existed, was born in 1378 and died at the age of 110 in 1488. Of course, there is nothing to link this legendary – perhaps non-existent – German philosopher and teacher with Britain. He would have been 21 in 1399 when King Richard II of England was deposed, and would then have lived right through the entire period of turmoil we call the Wars of the Roses. This means he would have witnessed the reigns of the Lancastrian Kings (Henry IV, V and VI) and also those of the Yorkists, Edward IV and V, and Richard III. Finally, as a very old man, he would have still been alive in 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III, married Elizabeth of York (the daughter of Edward IV) and thereby united the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York to give a hybrid – the Tudor rose.
All this is not to say that there is a direct connection between the genesis of the German Rosicrucian movement and the English Wars of the Roses; however, there could be an indirect one. Whoever wrote the Rosicrucian pamphlets must have known about the Wars of the Roses and how the red and white roses symbolized different, royal houses. The question is: was he (or were they) in possession of other information concerning rose symbolism? If so, what was the crucified rose truly meant to symbolize? The Crucifixion? The Masonic degree of the Rose Croix? Or maybe something even more esoteric? To find answers to these questions, I went back to Wales and started looking for other clues, beginning with what had once housed the greatest library of Welsh literature anywhere in the country – Raglan Castle.