John Dee: Her Majesty's Sorcerer (Part II)

Achievements

Thought

Dee was an intensely religious Christian, but his religiosity was heavily influenced by the Hermetic and Platonic-Pythagorean doctrines that were pervasive in the Renaissance.  He believed that numbers were the basis of all things and the key to knowledge.  From Hermeticism, he drew the belief that man had the potential for divine power, and he believed this divine power could be exercised through mathematics.  His ultimate goal was to help bring forth a unified world religion through the healing of the breach of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches and the recapture of the pure theology of the ancients.

Advocacy of English expansion

From 1570 Dee advocated a policy of political and economic strengthening of England and imperial expansion into the New World.  In his manuscript, Brytannicae reipublicae synopsis (1570), he outlined the current state of the Elizabethan Realm and was concerned with trade, ethics and national strength.

His 1576 General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation was the first volume in an unfinished series planned to advocate the rise of imperial expansion.  In the highly symbolic frontispiece, Dee included a figure of Britannia kneeling by the shore beseeching Elizabeth I, to protect her empire by strengthening her navy.  Dee used Geoffrey's inclusion of Ireland in Arthur's imperial conquests to argue that Arthur had established a 'British empire' abroad.  He further argued that England exploit new lands through colonization and that this vision could become reality through maritime supremacy.  Dee has been credited with the coining of the term British Empire, however, Humphrey Llwyd has also been credited with the first use of the term in his Commentarioli Britannicae Descriptionis Fragmentum, published eight years earlier in 1568.

Dee posited a formal claim to North America on the back of a map drawn in 1577–80; he noted Circa 1494 Mr Robert Thorn his father, and Mr Eliot of Bristow, discovered Newfound Land.  In his Title Royal of 1580, he invented the claim that Madog ab Owain Gwynedd had discovered America, with the intention of ensuring that England's claim to the New World was stronger than that of Spain.  He further asserted that Brutus of Britain and King Arthur as well as Madog had conquered lands in the Americas and therefore their heir Elizabeth I of England had a priority claim there.

Reputation and significance

About ten years after Dee's death, the antiquarian Robert Cotton purchased land around Dee's house and began digging in search of papers and artifacts. He discovered several manuscripts, mainly records of Dee's angelic communications. Cotton's son gave these manuscripts to the scholar Méric Casaubon, who published them in 1659, together with a long introduction critical of their author, as A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and some spirits.  As the first public revelation of Dee's spiritual conferences, the book was extremely popular and sold quickly. Casaubon, who believed in the reality of spirits, argued in his introduction that Dee was acting as the unwitting tool of evil spirits when he believed he was communicating with angels. This book is largely responsible for the image, prevalent for the following two and a half centuries, of Dee as a dupe and deluded fanatic.  Around the same time the True and Faithful Relation was published, members of the Rosicrucian movement claimed Dee as one of their number.  There is doubt, however, that an organized Rosicrucian movement existed during Dee's lifetime, and no evidence that he ever belonged to any secret fraternity.  Dee's reputation as a magician and the vivid story of his association with Edward Kelley have made him a seemingly irresistible figure to fabulists, writers of horror stories and latter-day magicians. The accretion of false and often fanciful information about Dee often obscures the facts of his life, remarkable as they are in themselves. It also does nothing to promote his Christian leanings: Dee looked to the angels to speak to him about how he might heal the very deep and serious rifts between the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformed Church of England and the Protestant movement in England.  Queen Elizabeth I used him as her court astronomer on a number of occasions not solely because he practiced Hermetic arts, but because he was a deeply religious and learned man whom she trusted.

A revaluation of Dee's character and significance came in the 20th century, largely as a result of the work of the historians Charlotte Fell Smith and Dame Frances Yates. Both writers brought into focus the parallel roles magic, science and religion held in the Elizabethan Renaissance. Fell Smith writes: "There is perhaps no learned author in history who has been so persistently misjudged, nay, even slandered, by his posterity, and not a voice in all the three centuries uplifted even to claim for him a fair hearing. Surely it is time that the cause of all this universal condemnation should be examined in the light of reason and science; and perhaps it will be found to exist mainly in the fact that he was too far advanced in speculative thought for his own age to understand."  As a result of this and subsequent re-evaluation, Dee is now viewed as a serious scholar and book-collector, a devoted Christian (albeit during a very confusing time for that faith), an able scientist, and one of the most learned men of his day.  His personal library at Mortlake was the largest in the country (before it was vandalized), and was created at enormous and sometimes ruinous personal expense; it was considered one of the finest in Europe, perhaps second only to that of De Thou. As well as being an astrological and scientific advisor to Elizabeth and her court, he was an early advocate of the colonization of North America and a visionary of a British Empire stretching across the North Atlantic.

Dee promoted the sciences of navigation and cartography. He studied closely with Gerardus Mercator, and he owned an important collection of maps, globes and astronomical instruments. He developed new instruments as well as special navigational techniques for use in Polar Regions. Dee served as an advisor to the English voyages of discovery, and personally selected pilots and trained them in navigation.  He believed that mathematics (which he understood mystically) was central to the progress of human learning. The centrality of mathematics to Dee's vision makes him to that extent more modern than Francis Bacon, though some scholars believe Bacon purposely downplayed mathematics in the anti-occult atmosphere of the reign of James I.  It should be noted, though, that Dee's understanding of the role of mathematics is radically different from our contemporary view.  Dee's promotion of mathematics outside the universities was an enduring practical achievement. As with most of his writings, Dee chose to write in English, rather than Latin, to make his writings accessible to the general public. His "Mathematical Preface" to Euclid was meant to promote the study and application of mathematics by those without a university education, and was very popular and influential among the "mecanicians": the new and growing class of technical craftsmen and artisans. Dee's preface included demonstrations of mathematical principles that readers could perform themselves without special education or training.

During the 20th century, the Municipal Borough of Richmond (now the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames) honored John Dee by naming a street near Mortlake, where he lived, "Dee Road" after him.

Calendar

Dee was a friend of Tycho Brahe and was familiar with the work (translated into English by his ward and assistant, Thomas Digges) of Nicolaus Copernicus.  Many of his astronomical calculations were based on Copernican assumptions, but he never openly espoused the heliocentric theory. Dee applied Copernican theory to the problem of calendar reform. In 1583, he was asked to advise the Queen about the new Gregorian calendar that had been promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII from October 1582. His advice was that England should accept it, albeit with seven specific amendments. The first of these was that the adjustment should not be the 10 days that would restore the calendar to the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, but by 11 days, which would restore it to the birth of Christ. Another proposal of Dee's was to align the civil and liturgical years, and to have them both start on 1 January. Perhaps predictably, England chose to spurn any suggestions that had papist origins, despite any merit they may objectively have, and Dee's advice was rejected.

Voynich manuscript

He has often been associated with the Voynich manuscript.  Wilfrid Michael Voynich, who bought the manuscript in 1912, suggested that Dee may have owned the manuscript and sold it to Rudolph II. Dee's contacts with Rudolph were far less extensive than had previously been thought, however, and Dee's diaries show no evidence of the sale. Dee was, however, known to have possessed a copy of the Book of Soyga, another enciphered book.

Works

Preface to Billingsley's Euclid (Billingsley's translation of Euclid's Elements), 1570

General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, 1577

On the Mystical Rule of the Seven Planets, 1582–1583

Artefacts

Objects used by Dee in his magic, now in the British Museum

The British Museum holds several items once owned by Dee and associated with the spiritual conferences:

Dee's Speculum or Mirror (an obsidian Aztec cult object in the shape of a hand-mirror, brought to Europe in the late 1520s), which was subsequently owned by Horace Walpole.  The item was first attributed to Dee by Walpole. Lord Frederick Campbell had brought "a round piece of shining black marble in a leathern case" to Walpole in an attempt to ascertain the object's provenance. According to Walpole, he responded saying "Oh, Lord, I am the only man in England that can tell you! It is Dr. Dee's black stone". There is no explicit reference to the mirror in any of Dee's surviving writings. The provenance of the Museum's obsidian speculum, as well as the crystal ball, is in fact dubious.

The small wax seals used to support the legs of Dee's "table of practice" (the table at which the scrying was performed).

The large, elaborately decorated wax "Seal of God", used to support the "shew-stone", the crystal ball used for scrying.

A gold amulet engraved with a representation of one of Kelley's visions.

A crystal globe, 6 cm in diameter. This item remained unnoticed for many years in the mineral collection; possibly the one owned by Dee, but the provenance of this object is less certain than that of the others.

In December 2004, both a shew stone (a stone used for scrying) formerly belonging to Dee and a mid-17th century explanation of its use written by Nicholas Culpeper were stolen from the Science Museum in London; they were recovered shortly afterwards.

Literary and cultural references

Dee was a popular figure in literary works written by his contemporaries, and he has continued to feature in popular culture ever since, particularly in fiction or fantasy set during his lifetime or that deals with magic or the occult.

16th and 17th centuries

Edmund Spenser may be referring to Dee in The Faerie Queene (1596).

William Shakespeare may have modelled the character of Prospero in The Tempest (1610–11) on Dee.

19th century

William Harrison Ainsworth includes Dee as a character in his 1840 novel Guy Fawkes.

Dee is the subject of Henry Gillard Glindoni's painting John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I.

20th century

John Dee, and his fictional modern descendant Baron Mueller, are the main characters in Gustav Meyrink's 1927 novel The Angel of the West Window (original German title: Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster).

The early twentieth century horror author H. P. Lovecraft mentions Dee as one of the translators of the fictional book Al Azif (commonly known as the Necronomicon) in his short fictional essay, History of the Necronomicon, which reads: "An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript."

John Dee is one of the main characters of Peter Ackroyd's 1993 novel The House of Doctor Dee.

21st century

John Dee appears as the plot's main antagonist "the Walker" in Charlie Fletcher's book Stoneheart (2006)

Dr John Dee serves as a main character in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott (2007–2012). He is an English magician and necromancer.

Phil Rickman casts John Dee as the main detective, investigating the disappearance of the bones of King Arthur during the reign of Elizabeth I in the historical mystery The Bones of Avalon (2010).

The play Burn Your Bookes (2010) by Richard Byrne examines the relationship between John Dee, Edward Kelley and Edward Dyer.

The opera Dr Dee: An English Opera, written by Damon Albarn, explores Dee's life and work. It was premiered at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on 1 July 2011 and opened at the London Coliseum as part of the London 2012 Festival for the Cultural Olympiad in June 2012.