According to some, the name is derived from their supposed founder, Christian Rosencreutz, who died in 1484. And they account for the fact of the Rosicrucians not being heard of till 1604, by saying that Rosencreutz bound his disciples by an oath not to promulgate his doctrines for 120 years after his death. The mystical derivation of the name is thus given in the Encyc. Brit.:—
"The denomination evidently appears to be derived from the science of chemistry. It is not compounded, as many imagine, of the two words rosa and crux, which signify rose and cross, but of the latter of these two words and the Latin ros, which signifies dew. Of all natural bodies dew was deemed the most powerful dissolvent of gold; and the cross in the chemical language is equivalent to light, because the figure of the cross exhibits at the same time the three letters of which the word lux, light, is compounded. Now lux is called by this sect the seed or menstruum of the red dragon, or, in other words, gross and corporeal light, which, when properly digested and modified, produces gold. Hence it follows, if this etymology be admitted, that a Rosicrucian philosopher is one who, by the intervention and assistance of the dew, seeks for light; or, in other words, the philosopher's stone.
"The true meaning and energy of this denomination did not escape the penetration and sagacity of Gassendi, as appears by his Examen Philos. Fludd, tom. iii. s. 15. p. 261.; and it was more fully explained by Renaudot in his Conférences Publiques, tom. iv. p. 87."
The encyclopædist remarks that at first the title commanded some respect, as it seemed to be borrowed from the arms of Luther, which were a cross placed upon a rose.
The leading doctrines of the Rosicrucians were borrowed from the Eastern philosophers[[4]]; the Christian Platonists, schoolmen, and mystics: mixed up with others derived from writers on natural history, magic, astrology, and especially alchemy. All these blended together, and served up in a professional jargon of studied obscurity, formed the doctrinal system of these strange philosophers. In this system the doctrine of elemental spirits, and the means of communion and alliance with them, and the doctrine of signatures, are the most prominent points.
Let me refer Mr. Taylor to Michael Meyer's Themis Aurea, hoc est de legibus Fraternitatis Roseæ Crucis, Col. 1615; the works of Jacob Behmen, Robt. Fludd, John Heydon, Peter Mormius, Eugene Philalethes; the works of the Rosicrucian Society, containing seventy-one treatises in different languages; the Catalogue of Hermetic books by the Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoi, Paris, 1762; Manget's Biblioth. Chem. Curios., Col. 1702, 2 vols. folio; and the Theatrum Chemicum, Argent. 1662, 6 vols. 8vo.
I must make particular mention of the two most celebrated of the Rosicrucian works; the first is La Chiave del Cabinetto, Col. 1681, 12mo. The author, Joseph Francis Borri, gives a most systematic account of the doctrine of the Rosic Cross in this interesting little volume. He was imprisoned for magic and heresy, and died in his prison at Rome in 1695 at the age of seventy years. On this work was founded one still more remarkable—
"Le Compte de Gabalis, ou Entretiens sur les Sciences Secrètes. 'Quod tanto impendio absconditur etiam solum modo demonstrare, destruere est.'—Tertull. Sur la Copie imprimée à Paris, chez Claude Barbin.—M.DC.LXXI. 12mo., pp. 150."
This work, thus published anonymously, was from the pen of the Abbé de Villars. An English translation was published at London in 1714.
The doctrine of the Rosy Cross entered largely into the literature of the seventeenth century. This applies especially to the masques of James I. and Charles I. To the same source Shakspeare owes his Ariel, and Milton much of his Comus.