Scientiae 2025: Istanbul, 16-19 September, Annual Conference

Early Critics of the Rosicrucian Manifestos: Budovec and Libavius

17 Sept 2025, 09:55

20m

Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Lecture Hall (Amfi 9) (Istanbul)

Board: BN18

Individual papers S.2.2. Text and Transmission: Interpretive Practices and Scholarly Networks in Early Modern Europe

Speaker

Jiri Michalik (Palacky University, Olomouc)

Description

The Lutheran physician and alchemist Andreas Libavius is known as one of the first critics of the Rosicrucian manifestos. However, his criticism has received little analysis to date. The Czech Brethren theologian, politician and religious scholar Václav Budovec of Budov has also written critically on the reception of the Rosicrucian manifestos. Budovec's criticism has not yet been systematically studied and analysed. Both Libavius' and Budovec's criticism were published around the same time and are based on analogous positions. The basis of their criticism is a religiously informed attack on the theology of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, and the argumentation of both critics is similar regardless of denominational differences.
The paper compares the critiques of the two scholars, tracing the basic structural elements of both critiques. Libavius' critique is longer and more systematic, while Budovec's, on the other hand, exhibits original elements not found in any other critique of the Rosicrucian manifestos. The aim of the paper is to identify and analyze the intellectual patterns that lie behind both critiques. This will enable a better understanding of how the critical reception of the Rosicrucian manifestos took place in Central Europe between 1614 and 1616.

Short Biography

Jiří Michalík's research focuses on the history of late Renaissance and early modern philosophy and science. He graduated from Palacký University in Olomouc and spent study stays at the universities of Konstanz and Regensburg. He has worked as a researcher at the Centre for Work with Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and in the project Between Renaissance and Baroque: Philosophy and Knowledge in the Czech Lands and their wider European context. He is currently an external lecturer at Palacký University in Olomouc and a lecturer at the Military Academy in Vyškov. His research interests include Robert Fludd and Johannes Kepler. In his latest book "The Astronomer in Hermes' Garden. Johannes Kepler and Paracelsian Alchemy", he studied the influence of contemporary alchemical texts on the thought of Johannes Kepler.