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.
Comments
Post a Comment