Documenta Latomica Inedita.

DOCUMENTA LATOMICA INEDITA .

PAET III . BY THE EDITOR .. THE BRETHREN OF THE ROSE CROIX .

THE following paper , which , I believe , has never yet appeared in English as a whole , is taken and translated from the French of the fourth volume of the Abbes Banier ancl Mascrier , edition of Picard ' s " Histoire Generale , " etc ,, published at Paris , 1741 . It contains a good deal that is new to English studentsand may be interesting to not a few members of the Ancient

, and Accepted Rite . * Other writers , like Figuier , have based many of their remarks upon the same essay , but I have thought it well to give as much as could be given of it for reference . People are talking about the Fraternity of the Rose Croix . Let us ^ see , according to Naude's relation , who has made it the subject of a dissertation , what that society really was .

The Society or Fraternity of the Rose Croix had its birth in Germany . It is supposed that about the year 1394 , a young man of sixteen ; brought up in a convent since the age of nine , made the acquaintance of certain magicians , learned their science , ancl then went to travel in the Levant and Arabia ; that there he learned the extraordinary secrets of the Arab doctorsj , who assured him that he would be . the author of a " general reformation . " It is

added that from Arabia he went to Barbary and Spain , where he frequented the meetings of the Moorish and Jewish Cabalists who were driven out of Spain , where he essayed to commence his reformation . He returned to Germany , his own country , ancl died there in 1484 , 106 years old . The body of this man was carried into a grotto , and there it was placed without any further interment .

The oracle , or destiny , had ordained that he should remain there 120 years , and , conformably to this decree , he was only discovered in 1604 . This discovery was the cause of the establishment of the Brethren of the Rose Croix . In 1615 another German printed the manifesto and confession of the Brethren . This is , according to a German chronicle of the Rose Croix , how the discovery was made of which we have been speaking : one of the

Rose Croix , more penetrating than the others apparently , perceived in a portion of the grotto a stone pierced by a nail . He removed this stone , and having taken it away , discovered the grotto in which was deposited the founder of the Fraternity , with this inscription : " At the end of one hundred and twenty years I shall be manifested . " Above the monument or the tomb of the founder they readafter these four lettersACRC : "During my life I

, , , , , was granted for sepulchre this abridgment of the Universe . " To these words were joined devices . The body had within its hands a book written in letters of gold , where was contained the praise of the founder , and how , having amassed more treasures than monarchs , finding the age unworthy to possess