Professor Emeritus Stephen Clucas
Birkbeck, University of London
New discipline or restored wisdom?
John Dee and the ‘Holy Art’ of alchemy.
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday, October 1, 16:15-17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture by Professor Emeritus Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck, University of London), entitled “New discipline or restored wisdom? John Dee and the ‘Holy Art’ of alchemy“. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Professor Emeritus Stephen Clucas: In this paper I will be looking at John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564) and its debts to early Greek alchemy, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s conception of magic. I consider Dee’s ‘hieroglyphic monad’ both as an epistemic and an operative image (or talisman). As a ‘celestial anatomy’ or ‘cosmic likeness’ revealed by God, Dee’s glyph purported to teach an art which was at once new and ancient, which promised the magus the ability to operate not only in the terrestrial or celestial realms, but also in the supercelestial realm. Dee maintained that the ‘cabalistic’ re-arrangement and permutation of the components of his hieroglyph revealed alchemical secrets (a ‘science of the elements’ or ‘pyronomia’), but the ‘restoration’ of its mystical proportions also meant that the glyph was more than just a ‘barbarous sign’ but was ‘imbued with immortal life’ and contained the four primary numbers of the Pythagorean tetraktys in a mysterious way endowing it with the ‘ultimate power of art and nature’.
About Professor Emeritus Stephen Clucas
Stephen Clucas is emeritus Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History at Birkbeck, University of London. His publications include an edited collection of essays John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought(2006). He was founding co-editor (with Stephen Gaukroger) of the journal Intellectual History Review. He is currently editing (with Timothy Raylor) Thomas Hobbes’ De corpore ad related manuscripts for the Clarendon edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes.
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
