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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.
196. O beloved children of Christ, open your eyes, and see; do not run so after the devil; do you not see? Pray learn to see ! Do you not see how all is done for money? If one give them store of money, they praise him for a gracious Christian, who is beneficial and bountiful to the Church: If one die, though all his life long he was an unjust false usurer, whoremonger, thief, and murderer, and they knew it very well, if he or his bestow much upon the Church [colleges or learned men], O how is he applauded for a blessed and glorious man ! What great sermons do they make for him, that other unrighteous men may hear and consider, and follow their example to do the like? But stay, doth the kingdom of Christ consist in such [giving of] money, and in the mouth of the priest? No, it shall not prosper; here the wine-press yieldeth much blood, as the Revelation of John speaketh.
297. And thus the innocent are seduced, [or the poor souls hereby fall into despair], for he that giveth not to them much, or hath it not to give, is no honest man with them: He is not beneficial towards the ministry: but if the least mote is found amiss in his life, O how they divulge it, and make a great matter of it, how is he trodden underfoot! However, at length, they devoutly send a good wish after him, and say, God forgive him. Open your eyes, ye children of Christ, this is the Antichrist, go not a- whoring after him: Many such have been sinners, and have turned from their sins, and have entered into Christ, and their soul is in Christ an angel of God; and therefore how dare you, proud Antichrist, according to your own pleasure, despise one that is the angel of God? O thou blind man, dost thou not see this? Art thou the shepherd and minister of Christ, and steward of God? Hast thou the Mysterium Magnum about thee? Is thy office the office of Christ, as thou boastest? Why then art thou a liar, in applauding the wicked for money? Have Christ and his Apostles done so ? 98. Hearken, thou opposer of Christ, look into the Acts of the Apostles; Where one sold his possessions, and laid a part of the price of the money at the Apostle's feet: And Peter asked him, saying, Have you sold the. field for so much ?
3And he said yea; and had a false, doubtful [and deceitful] mind: then said Peter, thou hast lied unto the Holy Ghost; behold the feet of them that stand at the door, they shall carry you away out of the congregation of truth. What think you now of yourself? Seeing this has happened to the hearers of Peter, what would have been done to Peter himself if he had thus lied for greediness of money, and so blasphemed the Holy Ghost? But thou art he that dost so: thou applaudest the unrighteous, that thou mayest but get money; but thou regardest not his soul, neither dost thou regard how thou broachest forth thy lies in the congregation. How many times do some stand and bewail the wickedness and deceit of those thou praisest, wherewith they unjustly oppressed and wronged the needy, and also bewail thy flattering hypocrisy and lies? 99. Hearken! Is not the name of Christ blasphemed thereby, and the congregation of Christ scandalized? When they say, The priest tells lies in the pulpit for money, if it were a sin, he would not do i t: and so in like manner, when any lie and deceive people to get money, goods, and honour, if they can but cover it with a fine pretence, what matter is it? For [they think] if it were so great a sin, the priest would not do it; they think they will once repent of it, and the priest hath grace enough in store for them. 100. Behold, thou false and wicked Antichrist,
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.
196. O beloved children of Christ, open your eyes, and see; do not run so after the devil; do you not see? Pray learn to see ! Do you not see how all is done for money? If one give them store of money, they praise him for a gracious Christian, who is beneficial and bountiful to the Church: If one die, though all his life long he was an unjust false usurer, whoremonger, thief, and murderer, and they knew it very well, if he or his bestow much upon the Church [colleges or learned men], O how is he applauded for a blessed and glorious man ! What great sermons do they make for him, that other unrighteous men may hear and consider, and follow their example to do the like? But stay, doth the kingdom of Christ consist in such [giving of] money, and in the mouth of the priest? No, it shall not prosper; here the wine-press yieldeth much blood, as the Revelation of John speaketh.
297. And thus the innocent are seduced, [or the poor souls hereby fall into despair], for he that giveth not to them much, or hath it not to give, is no honest man with them: He is not beneficial towards the ministry: but if the least mote is found amiss in his life, O how they divulge it, and make a great matter of it, how is he trodden underfoot! However, at length, they devoutly send a good wish after him, and say, God forgive him. Open your eyes, ye children of Christ, this is the Antichrist, go not a- whoring after him: Many such have been sinners, and have turned from their sins, and have entered into Christ, and their soul is in Christ an angel of God; and therefore how dare you, proud Antichrist, according to your own pleasure, despise one that is the angel of God? O thou blind man, dost thou not see this? Art thou the shepherd and minister of Christ, and steward of God? Hast thou the Mysterium Magnum about thee? Is thy office the office of Christ, as thou boastest? Why then art thou a liar, in applauding the wicked for money? Have Christ and his Apostles done so ? 98. Hearken, thou opposer of Christ, look into the Acts of the Apostles; Where one sold his possessions, and laid a part of the price of the money at the Apostle's feet: And Peter asked him, saying, Have you sold the. field for so much ?
3And he said yea; and had a false, doubtful [and deceitful] mind: then said Peter, thou hast lied unto the Holy Ghost; behold the feet of them that stand at the door, they shall carry you away out of the congregation of truth. What think you now of yourself? Seeing this has happened to the hearers of Peter, what would have been done to Peter himself if he had thus lied for greediness of money, and so blasphemed the Holy Ghost? But thou art he that dost so: thou applaudest the unrighteous, that thou mayest but get money; but thou regardest not his soul, neither dost thou regard how thou broachest forth thy lies in the congregation. How many times do some stand and bewail the wickedness and deceit of those thou praisest, wherewith they unjustly oppressed and wronged the needy, and also bewail thy flattering hypocrisy and lies? 99. Hearken! Is not the name of Christ blasphemed thereby, and the congregation of Christ scandalized? When they say, The priest tells lies in the pulpit for money, if it were a sin, he would not do i t: and so in like manner, when any lie and deceive people to get money, goods, and honour, if they can but cover it with a fine pretence, what matter is it? For [they think] if it were so great a sin, the priest would not do it; they think they will once repent of it, and the priest hath grace enough in store for them. 100. Behold, thou false and wicked Antichrist,
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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