Solemn Historical Dissertation on the Rosicrucians

asserts that none other than Aegidius Gutmann was the author of this Society. Third, I prove this from the agreement of their doctrines. The primary dogma of Gutmann, to pass over others in silence, relied on enthusiastic revelations, which the Venerable Ministerium of Tripoli clearly demonstrates (in the place cited, pp. 8, 170, 171, 175, 400). That this same thing was primary to the Rosicrucians will be shown below. Fourth, he is commended by the Rosicrucians as Brother R. C. Thus, a certain person, under the letters M. B. M. F. C. I., in the year 1619, confesses concerning Aegidius Gutmann that he was a Brother. Fifth, because he boasts the same things about himself as the Rosicrucians; for example, he promises the transmutation of metals and the elaboration of gold and the philosopher’s stone. Compare again the Ministerium of Tripoli, p. 378, seqq. Sixth, because there is no doubt that this Society was prepared through secret passages before it came forth, since I have noticed that a certain person, mentioned by Carolus in Memorabilia of the 17th Century, Book II, Chapter XXV, who, at the end of the histories he attributes to the years of the Rudolphine Empire, is forced to admit that the fame which had been bandied about for several years had remained in darkness. Thus Plaustrarius, in his Figurative Revelation, p. 33, says they had been forging it for ten years. But since the Fama Fraternitatis, as Haselmeyer indicates in his Response to the Brothers of the Rose Cross, p. 67, was already most well-known in Germany in 1610, and Iulius Sperber, that famous fanatic, in his Echo of the Fraternity (according to Arnold, published in 1615, of whose writing I have nevertheless seen a Gdansk edition, 1616, in 8vo), affirms that mention of the Fama Fraternitatis had already been made in certain private writings nineteen or more years earlier, what prevents me from referring the origin of this Society to the 16th century, specifically to that space between the years 1570 and 1580? Especially if credit is to be given to the author of a certain pamphlet consisting of two leaves (which, along with others, was shared with me by my most learned friend M. S. C.), without the name of the author or place, though published at Nuremberg, as I believe, in German verse, whose inscription is: original: "Send-Brief an die Herrn des Decem Virats der Fraternität des Rosen-Creuzes &c. vom geheimen Schlüssel des fast uneröffentlichen Schlosses &c." Sending-letter to the Gentlemen of the Decemvirate of the Fraternity of the Rose-Cross etc., concerning the secret key of the almost unopened castle etc. This author, whoever