Byzantine emperor Alexios I faced a seemingly insurmountable challenge in the 11th Century. Despite being the heir to the Roman Empire, Alexios I saw his area of rule diminishing with the expansion of the Seljuq dynasty.
The House of Seljuq was a Turkish family who practiced a Sunni variation of Islam that, in time, integrated features of Persian culture. With the unifying force of Islam, they had managed to expand their empire far and wide through the Middle East and into Central Asia. By the 11th Century, however, the Seljuq empire was fraught with internal conflict as local rulers attempted to consolidate their powers rather than form an integrated empire.
Alexios I did not have the manpower needed to fight off the Seljuq, so he made an appeal across the Schism to Urban II, the Pope in Rome. He wanted access to the armies of Western Europe under his command. What he got instead was the First Crusade.
The First Crusade was successful in fighting back the Seljuq in the Middle East and overtaking what Christianity was as “The Holy Land.” This return of the True Church to the Holy Land had opened the doorway for ideas like Joachim’s and other readings of Revelation suggesting that the End was at hand. New economic methods were developed to equip Crusaders, keep track of goods and supplies, and return found wealth to the ruling centers in Europe, which would, in time, yield the first transnational banking systems. It also brought Western European nations into significant contact with the Islamic World for the first time and, with it, restored access to texts from the Classical World, which had been thought wholly lost.
The changing vision of the meaning of the present, the shifting economic systems, and the return of “Lost Wisdom” fermented together, forming what has become known as the Renaissance. For Renaissance thinkers, the Classical World held all wisdom. The older, the better. While works of the Greeks, such as Aristotle and Plato, were seen as significant, the real prize, based upon Lactantius’ ideas on Hermes Trismegistus, was the Hermetica.
In the 15th Century, Marsilio Ficino was employed by Cosimo de Medici towards the re-founding of Plato’s Academy in Florence, Italy. He was engaged with the translation of Plato’s Dialogs towards this end when Leonardo da Pistoia discovered an early-era cache of Hellenistic documents. Cosimo purchased the materials from da Pistoia and insisted that Ficino cease working on Plato. He now had something more important to translate: the Hermetica.
Ficino’s translation of the Hermetica set off an intellectual firestorm in Europe. The most Ancient of Ancient wisdom had been restored just in time for the Apocalypse. And should it not be so? Should not the future Final Kingdom to Reign in the Name of the Lord have restored to it the most primordial revelations of that Lord? And should not the technologies contained therein, these practices known as magic, act as means for fulfilling the prophecies of the End Times?
Ficino himself would contribute a vital idea to this matrix, the “Prisca Theologia.” Ficino, drawing upon Lactantius, would suggest that going back to primordial times, a single true theology was being revealed through history. Beginning with Hermes Trismegistus and weaving through Zoroaster and the Chaldeans, the Greeks such as Pythagoras to Plato, into the Neo-Platonic thinkers and eventually into the Church of Rome, the one true theology was becoming manifest in the World. This idea would influence Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, eventually laying the seeds for Rosicrucianism.
As there was an awareness that the Ancient Wisdom might contain untruth, those engaged in these practices were monitored by Church authorities but were not banned outright. Cryptography systems were developed to ensure that information could be passed freely. Johannes Trithemius’ Steganographia was the most critical work in this tradition.
Much of the Hermetica was focused upon the practices of Astrology and led to a great revival of this practice in Europe. In addition, texts on Alchemy from the Classical and Islamic Worlds were being translated and integrated into this intellectual milieu. Rather than being seen as heresy, initially, these practices were seen in the light of the importance of Hermes Trismegistus and, as such, were not seen to be a source of theological conflict. Indeed an entire class of “Righteous Scholar Magicians” was forming who brought together an interest in ancient languages, the Hermetica, and skilled observation of materiality and the stars.
As the 15th Century gave way to the 16th massive social and political upheaval would transform the Western Word. Working at the hub of these changes was the most significant representative of this neo-tradition of Righteous Scholar Magician: John Dee.
Setemheb 