English scientist and occultist (1527–1608/09)
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England at the time. As a political advisor, he advocated the foundation of English colonies in the New World to form a "British Empire", a term he is credited with coining.
Dee eventually left Elizabeth's service and went on a quest for additional knowledge in the deeper realms of the occult and supernatural. He aligned himself with several individuals who may have been charlatans, travelled through Europe, and was accused of spying for the English Crown. Upon his return to England, he found his home and library vandalised. He eventually returned to the Queen's service, but was turned away when she was succeeded by James I. He died in poverty in London, and his gravesite is unknown.
Biography.
Early life.
Dee was born in Tower Ward, London, to Rowland Dee, of Welsh descent, and Johanna, daughter of William Wild. His surname "Dee" is an anglicisation of Welsh "du" (). His grandfather was Bedo Ddu of Nant-y-groes, Pilleth, Radnorshire; John retained his connection with the locality. His father Roland was a mercer and gentleman courtier to Henry VIII. Dee traced descent from Rhodri the Great, 9th century ruler of Gwynedd, and constructed a pedigree accordingly. His family had arrived in London with Henry Tudor's coronation as Henry VII.
Dee attended Chelmsford Chantry School (now King Edward VI Grammar School) from 1535 to 1542. He entered St John's College, Cambridge in November 1542, aged 15, graduating BA in 1545 or early 1546. His abilities recognised, he became an original fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge on its foundation by Henry VIII in 1546. At Trinity, he designed stage effects for a production of Aristophanes' "Peace". Using pulleys and mirrors, Dee was able to create the illusion of "the Scarabeus flying up to Jupiter's palace" in a mechanical contrivance possibly based on rediscovered classical techniques. Dee would later claim this to be the source of his reputation as a magician. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled around Europe, studying at Louvain (1548) and Brussels and lecturing in Paris on Euclid. He studied under Gemma Frisius and became friends with the cartographers Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. Dee also met, worked and learnt from other continental mathematicians, such as Federico Commandino in Italy. He returned to England with a major collection of mathematical and astronomical instruments. In 1552, he met Gerolamo Cardano in London, with whom he investigated a purported perpetual motion machine and a gem supposed to have magical properties.
Rector at Upton-upon-Severn from 1553, Dee was offered a readership in mathematics at Oxford University in 1554, which he declined, citing as offensive English universities' emphasis on rhetoric and grammar (which, together with logic, formed the academic "trivium") over philosophy and science (the more advanced "quadrivium", composed of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). He was busy with writing and perhaps hoped for a better position at court. On 17 February 1554, Dee took Catholic orders in the midst of the Marian reaction. The Catholic bishop Edmund Bonner, likely already a close friend of Dee's at this point, gave him special permission to receive all of the holy orders from first tonsure to priesthood in only a single day.
In 1555, Dee joined the Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through its system of patrimony.
In that same year Dee was arrested and charged with "lewd and vain practices of calculating and conjuring", because he had cast horoscopes of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth. The charges were raised to treason against Mary. Dee appeared in the Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to Bonner for religious examination. His strong, lifelong penchant for secrecy may have worsened matters. The episode was the most dramatic in a series of attacks and slanders that dogged Dee throughout his life. At some point, possibly before his charges were officially dismissed, Dee became Bonner's chaplain. In some early editions of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, Dee, as Bonner's chaplain, is recorded debating the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist with Protestant prisoner Robert Smith (who accused Dee of Marcionism because his argument in favor of transubstantiation rested on the idea that Christ possessed only a spiritual body) and participating in the seventh examination of John Philpot.
Dee presented Queen Mary in 1556 with a visionary plan for preserving old books, manuscripts and records and founding a national library, but it was not taken up. Instead, he expanded his personal library in Mortlake, acquiring books and manuscripts in England and on the Continent. Dee's library, a centre of learning outside the universities, became the greatest in England and attracted many scholars.
When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558, Dee became her astrological and scientific advisor. He chose her coronation date and even became a Protestant. From the 1550s to the 1570s, he served as an advisor to England's voyages of discovery, providing technical aid in navigation and political support to create a "British Empire", a term he was the first to use. Dee wrote in October 1574 to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley seeking patronage. He said he had occult knowledge of treasure in the Welsh Marches and of valuable manuscripts kept at Wigmore Castle, knowing that the Lord Treasurer's ancestors came from the area.
In 1564, Dee wrote the Hermetic work "Monas Hieroglyphica" ("The Hieroglyphic Monad"), an exhaustive Cabalistic interpretation of a glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation. Having dedicated it to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in an effort to gain patronage, Dee attempted to present it to him at the time of his ascension to the throne of Hungary. The work was esteemed by many of Dee's contemporaries, and the royal secret service valued its treatise on cryptography, but it cannot be fully understood today in the absence of the secret oral tradition of that era.
His 1570 "Mathematical Preface" to Henry Billingsley's English translation of Euclid's "Elements" argued for the importance of mathematics as an influence on the other arts and sciences. Intended for an audience outside the universities, it proved to be Dee's most widely influential and frequently reprinted work.
In 1577, Dee published , a work setting out his vision of a maritime empire and asserting English territorial claims on the New World. Dee was acquainted with Humphrey Gilbert and close to Sir Philip Sidney and his circle.
Later life.
By the early 1580s, Dee was discontented with his progress in learning the secrets of nature and his diminishing influence and recognition in court circles. Failure of his ideas concerning a proposed calendar revision, colonial establishment and ambivalent results for voyages of exploration in North America had nearly brought his hopes of political patronage to an end. He began subsequently to turn energetically towards the supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. He sought to contact spirits through the use of a scryer, which he thought would act as an intermediary between himself and the angels.
Dee's first attempts with several scryers were unsatisfactory, but in 1582 he met Edward Kelley (then calling himself Edward Talbot) who impressed him greatly with his abilities. Dee took Kelley into his service and began to devote all his energies to his supernatural pursuits. These "spiritual conferences" or "actions" were conducted with intense Christian piety, always after periods of purification, prayer and fasting. Dee was convinced of the benefits they could bring to mankind. The character of Kelley is harder to assess: some conclude that he acted with cynicism, but delusion or self-deception cannot be ruled out. Kelley's "output" is remarkable for its volume, intricacy and vividness. Dee records in his journals that angels dictated several books to him this way, through Kelley, some in a special angelic or Enochian language.
In 1583, Dee met the impoverished yet popular Polish nobleman Albert Łaski, who, after overstaying his welcome at court, invited Dee to accompany him back to Poland. With some prompting by the "angels" (again through Kelley) and by dint of his worsening status at court, Dee decided to do so. He, Kelley and their families left in September 1583, but Łaski proved to be bankrupt and out of favour in his own country. Dee and Kelley began a nomadic life in Central Europe, meanwhile continuing their spiritual conferences, which Dee detailed in his diaries and almanacs. They had audiences with Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle and King Stephen Báthory of Poland, whom they attempted to convince of the importance of angelic communication. The Bathory meeting took place at the Niepołomice Castle (near Kraków, then capital of Poland) and was later analysed by Polish historians (Ryszard Zieliński, Roman Żelewski, Roman Bugaj) and writers (Waldemar Łysiak).While Dee was generally seen as a man of deep knowledge, he was mistrusted for his connection with the English monarch, Elizabeth I, for whom some thought Dee was a spy. Dee did indeed pen a covert letter to spymaster Francis Walsingham in which he said "I am forced to be brief...That which England suspected was also here". The Polish king, a devout Catholic and cautious of supernatural mediators, began their meeting(s) by affirming that prophetic revelations must match the teachings of Christ, the mission of the Holy Catholic Church, and the approval of the Pope.
In 1587, at a spiritual conference in Bohemia, Kelley told Dee that the angel Uriel had ordered the men to share all their possessions, including their wives. By this time, Kelley had gained some renown as an alchemist and was more sought-after than Dee in this regard: it was a line of work that had prospects for serious and long-term financial gain, especially among the royal families of central Europe. Dee, however, was more interested in communicating with angels, who he believed would help him solve the mysteries of the heavens through mathematics, optics, astrology, science, and navigation. Perhaps Kelley in fact wished to end Dee's dependence on him as a diviner at their increasingly lengthy, frequent spiritual conferences. The order for wife-sharing caused Dee anguish, but he apparently did not doubt it was genuine and they apparently shared wives. However, Dee broke off the conferences immediately afterwards. He returned to England in 1589, while Kelley went on to be the alchemist to Emperor Rudolf II. Nine months later, on 28 February 1588, a son was born to Dee's wife, whom Dee baptised Theodorus Trebonianus Dee and raised as his own.
Final years.
Dee returned to Mortlake after six years abroad to find his home vandalised, his library ruined and many of his prized books and instruments stolen. Furthermore, he found that increasing criticism of occult practices had made England still less hospitable to his magical practices and natural philosophy. He sought support from Elizabeth, who hoped he could persuade Kelley to return and ease England's economic burdens through alchemy. She finally appointed Dee Warden of Christ's College, Manchester, in 1595.
This former College of Priests had been re-established as a Protestant institution by Royal Charter in 1578. However, he could not exert much control over its fellows, who despised or cheated him. Early in his tenure, he was consulted on the demonic possession of seven children, but took little interest in the case, although he allowed those involved to consult his still extensive library.
Dee left Manchester in 1605 to return to London, but remained Warden until his death. By that time, Elizabeth was dead and James I gave him no support. Dee spent his final years in poverty at Mortlake, forced to sell off various possessions to support himself and his daughter, Katherine, who cared for him until his death in Mortlake late in 1608 or early in 1609 aged 81. Both the parish registers and Dee's gravestone are missing. In 2013 a memorial plaque to Dee was placed on the south wall of the present church.
Personal life.
Dee was married three times and had eight children. He married his first wife, Katherine Constable in 1565. They had no children, and she died in 1574. He married his second wife, whose name is unknown, in 1575. She died in 1576, again with