Rosicrucianism, Lutheran Orthodoxy, and the Rejection of Paracelsianism in Early Seventeenth-Century Denmark

There are many faces to the chemical philosophy that is associated with the German reformer Theophrastus Paracelsus: his ideas penetrated radical theology, internal medicine, surgery, mineralogy, pharmacology, and even political philosophy—inasmuch as Paracelsianism helped shape religious dissent in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Various aspects of this historical process have been examined in the large literature on Paracelsus and the Paracelsians, and on the Rosicrucian movement. Even so, the dynamics of the reception and rejection of Paracelsian ideas (as distinct from chemical drugs), and the effect that Paracelsian philosophy has had on early modern scientific writers, require further exploration and documentation. Specific instances—microhistorical studies—are needed in order to sustain or challenge the larger patterns that emerge. These studies need to be temporally and geographically diverse and contextually sensitive.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the reception of Paracelsian natural philosophy in a specific setting—Copenhagen in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—and to illuminate the changing intellectual and religious context that ultimately made that doctrine publicly untenable. In particular, I will argue that the growing orthodoxy of the Lutheran church in Denmark created an environment in which Paracelsian ideas were a liability. Meanwhile, Paracelsian doctrines were being put forth in the literature of religious dissent that laid the foundations for the later development of radical Pietism. ¹

One subset of this literature comprises the treatises and correspondence associated with the Rosicrucian calls for reform in the second decade of the seventeenth century. Other scholars have undertaken to link the “Rosicrucian furor” with Paracelsianism, and to connect both with the political and religious upheavals antecedent to the Thirty Years’ War. ² The present study offers clear evidence of these connections by first establishing that an interest in Paracelsianism existed in Denmark; that it was explicitly rejected by one of Copenhagen’s leading academicians, Ole Worm (1588–1654), whose views are a fair indication of general academic sentiment; and that it was rejected because of its intimate connections to Rosicrucianism. Finally, this narrative is placed in the religious and political context of Counter-Reformation Denmark, and specific historical explanations for the rather abrupt change in attitude toward Paracelsianism are offered, with special attention given to Andreas Libavius’s criticism of Paracelsian and Rosicrucian doctrine.

Ole Worm and the Medical Professors at Copenhagen

Although Denmark is often regarded as a small country, out of the intellectual mainstream, in the early seventeenth century it was a chief player in the northern European politics of power. The continental dominions under the control of Christian IV—comprising what is today southern Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Schleswig-Holstein—lay adjacent to the Holy Roman Empire and controlled all traffic into the Baltic Sea. At the cultural and political center of this kingdom lay Copenhagen.

The mid-seventeenth-century blossoming of the Scientific Revolution in Copenhagen produced scientists of international repute and enduring importance to the history of science—men such as Christian Sørensen Longomontanus, Thomas Bartholin, Simon Pauli, Niels Stensen (Steno), Ole Rømer, and Ole Borch. The observational prowess, the synthesis of facts, and the generation of new scientific theories that have given these men enduring fame are credited in part to the development of a Danish empiricism at Copenhagen, an attitude toward methodology similar to that which in England was called Baconian. Ole Worm, professor of medicine and collector of natural oddities, has come to symbolize this no-nonsense skeptical empiricism—in part because he was central to the academic developments until his death in 1654, as a prominent member of the medical patriarchy that then ruled medicine, and in part because of the volumes of correspondence he has left to posterity. He was at one time or another in contact with every Danish figure of academic importance in the second quarter of the seventeenth century and he served as a clearinghouse for new ideas, information about books, and news of academic positions coming available. ³ Yet if we examine the early interests of this champion of diffidence, we find him intent on...