Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileJacob Boehme (1575–1624)PUBLIC DOMAIN as published. Boehme d. 1624; the Sparrow translation is 1656. Per-part determination MADE 2026-08-29: the eight front-matter segments carrying the 2009 electronic edition own introductory apparatus were withheld (three excised in full, five redacted in part where a public-domain title block or Boehme text shared the page). The remaining 5,022 segments are public domain and are open at seeker tier.905 of 1000 segments carry a modern register · 343 pp

Jacob Boehme — the works in English, and one in Frencheditor’s preface to the volume

Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.

The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.

Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.

That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.

The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.

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1begged to be excused. He would have nothing to do with Town Council or Court of Justice, and declared that he had said from the pulpit all that was needed ', the Council had only to act up to it, and banish the insolent heretic, so that the holy clerical dignity might no longer be offended, and that the town might escape the divine vengeance. The magistrates, disturbed by these threats, anxious perhaps to avoid any possible popular excitement with its consequences, had the book Aurora brought to the town-hall and placed under lock and key. In the meantime, Boehme, who was under arrest, was served with an order to leave the town : even his wish to take leave of his family and set in order a few private matters was disregarded. Boehme only said: "Since this must be, dear sirs, I am content." And he left the town.

2During the night, the Councillors seem to have come to their senses and regretted their haste; for they assembled again early hi the morning and resolved to bring back again the man they had banished the day before. After a great deal of searching, he was found in the neighbourhood and led home in triumph. This account of Wiesner is, he himself admits, by no means a first-hand one, and therefore probably much embellished. Certain it is that the fragments preserved out of the diary of Bartholomew Scultetus, then mayor of Gorlitz, shew nothing that refers to an actual banishment, but chronicle the following facts only (Ueberfeld's ed., 1730):— "That on Friday, 26th July 1613, Jacob " Boehme, a shoemaker, domiciled between the town-gates, " behind the hospital smithy, had been summoned to the " town-hall and questioned regarding his enthusiastic " beliefs, and thereupon placed under arrest, while the " book in quarto-folio which he had written was fetched " from his house : that later, he had been set at liberty " with a caution to leave such things alone. " Also, that on Tuesday, 30th July, Jacob Boehme, a " shoemaker, had been summoned before the clergy of xlvi THE THREE PRINCIPLES " Gb'rlitz, assembled in the house of the Primarius, in " order to be carefully examined regarding his faith.

3" Also, that two days previously, on Sunday, 28th July, " the Primarius Gregorius Richter, preaching on false " prophets, had in his sermon sharply rebuked the shoe-- " maker Jacob Boehme." These notes probably state all the facts which form the basis of Wiesner's account. It is easy to detect in the story the elements of popular romance that joined into one three separate incidents, and exaggerated a mere threat into an actual banishment : yet, though the story is not actually correct, it furnishes a decidedly graphic representation of human character.

The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.

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Commentary

whole issue ·

Cross-estate[P-V]translated_asboehme:2:1:003

This English 'Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence' and boehme:11 are the same work in two languages — and the French is not just any translation. It is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's own: 'Des trois principes de l'essence divine', issued by the Périsse brothers of the rue Mercière. Saint-Martin learned German in his fifties expressly to read Boehme, and spent his last years translating him. The estate therefore holds, side by side, the text that formed the Unknown Philosopher and the form in which he gave it to France — the single most direct documentary link between the two founders of this corpus.

→ boehme:11