Re: VMs: Alchemy in Krumlov, Dee and Kelly in Bohemia

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I read that Kelly received a _lot_ of money from
> Rosenberg, over the years. There are apparently
> still records of that. It is also stated that he
> gave some of his powder to Rosenberg, but this
> could be more legendary than anything else.

I recently came across a very interesting book on this subject:

Michael Wilding
Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives
Shoestring Press, Nottingham and Abbot Bentley, Sydney 1999

Wilding is a well known Australian writer who set out to write a
novel about Dee and Kelly, but realised that the truth did not
need embellishing. The book is based entirely on Dee's writings
and other contemporary documents including reports from English
government agents and people like the banking house of Fugger who
were interested in gold. There is a good deal about Kelly in his
Bohemian period and probably more waiting to be discovered in
Czech archives.

A number of stories about Kelly are shown to be unsubstantiated,
for instance that he had his ears cut off and that he died trying
to escape from prison (he was imprisoned, but the circumstances of
his death are still unclear). More important, there is enough
information to put the 600 ducats in perspective.

> From 1584 to 1586 Dee and Kelly were in the service of Albrecht
Laski in Cracow and from 1586 to 1589 they were in the service of
Vilem Rozmberk/Rosenberg in Krumlov. All their other activities were in the
nature of excursions. Laski and Rozmberk were powerful barons and
both were potential kings of Poland, but Laski was deeply in debt
while Rozmberk was a very rich man. Early in the Laski period,
Dee met Emperor Rudolf and also king Stefan Bathory of Poland:
both men heard him out and then ignored him. Dee spent most of
his time consorting with illuminists like Thaddeus Hajek and
dodging agents of the papacy.

One of these agents was the renegade priest and false friend
Francesco Pucci. At the end of the Laski period he briefly got
Dee and Kelly banned from Bohemia, and when they returned, now
under the protection of Rozmberk, he demanded money from them.
To get rid of him they offered him 630 ducats which he refused:
they finally got him to accept, before witnesses, the sum of
2000 ducats, 400 dollars and 800 florins, almost certainly
provided by Rozmberk. At about this time, for unrelated reasons,
Rozmberk gave Jane Dee the gift of jewellery worth 300 ducats.

During the Rozmberk period Kelly flourished, convincing influential
people that he could make gold. He became the dominant partner: it
was then that he dropped the scrying sessions after persuading Dee
to exchange wives with him. In 1589, Dee returned to England in
triumph (why is not clear) but Kelly stayed on, becoming a favourite
of Rudolf and receiving a knighthood. Finally his finances aroused
suspicion and he was imprisoned: accounts of his death are
contradictory.

The point of all this is that Dee and Kelly produced the 630 ducats
to prove that they were *not* short of money. There is no reason at
all to think that it came from the sale of a book. Dee variously
records exchanging and donating books but never selling them. He
valued his library and the catalogue he had made just before he left
England does not include the Voynich manuscript. If he owned it at
all he must have acquired it on the continent and left it there: he
is known to have left books with Kelly.

Dee found himself a diminished figure when he returned to England.
His agents had mishandled his affairs and they (not a mob) had
pilfered his house and library. But in the Bohemian period this was
still in the future: Dee sometimes had money worries, but making
money was not the reason for his activities. My guess is that he
owned the book, if at all, at Krumlov. Sinapius fits in very well
here. As a Jesuit and also a native of Krumlov he bridges the gap
in time and space between between the alchemists and occultists
around emperor Rudolf and the later hardline Catholic group of
Baresch, Marci and Kinner who corresponded with Athanasius Kircher.

Philip Neal

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