[ROSICRUCIANISM.]
Fortalitium scientiae, das ist: die unfehlbare, volkommeliche, unerschätzliche Kunst aller Künsten und Magnalien, welche allen … Pansophiae studiosis … die Brüderschafft des Rosencreutzes zu eröffnen gesandt.
[Nuremberg], 1617.
8vo, ff. [24] (the last blank); a very good copy, disbound, with a recent marbled paper spine.
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Fortalitium scientiae, das ist: die unfehlbare, volkommeliche, unerschätzliche Kunst aller Künsten und Magnalien, welche allen … Pansophiae studiosis … die Brüderschafft des Rosencreutzes zu eröffnen gesandt.
First edition of this tract on Rosicrucianism which purports to have been written by Hugo de Alverda, an imaginary and very old Rosicrucian character.
The author, who wrote under the name of Irenaeus Agnostus, was Friederich Grick, perhaps one of the most peculiar participants in the catalogue of publications about the Brotherhood which came out in the first couple of decades of the century. Grick was a private tutor in Altdorf near Nuremberg. His publications conspicuously alternate between attacking and defending the sect, yet from his language his membership of the Brotherhood appears clear. Whilst in previous works his references to Rosicrucians ‘producing gold’ appeared to have simply an allegorical meaning of spiritual love, in the Fortalitium scientiae he associates the Brotherhood explicitly with alchemy by stating his belief in the Philosopher’s stone and mentioning experiments he had undertaken himself. Yet in other passages of the same work he offers nonsensical alchemical formulae, in clear mockery of alchemy. The text includes three letters of F.G. Menapius (i.e. J.V. Alberti) attacking the Roscicrucians to which this tract is a reply.
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