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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.
111. So also they did with the cup; they took it in their hand, and drank of it; for the uppermost of the congregation began, and said to the other, Take the cup and drink the blood of Christ our Lord, which he hath shed for us on the cross for the remission of sins, and commemorate his death, and the shedding of his blood, until he come again to judgment, and bring us into himself. 12. This, dear children, was the true Apostolical practice, and the Last Supper of Christ was even so; for, when Christ had instructed and taught his disciples, he began (after supper, when they had eaten the Paschal Lamb) the right eating of the Paschal Lamb, and gave them that Paschal Lamb [Passover] to eat, of which the first instituted by Moses was but an image and a shadow [or type] ; for he gave them his heavenly body to eat, and his heavenly blood to drink, which he had introduced into Mary's womb in the eternal beginningless heavenly Virgin of God, in the pure chaste immaterial [virginity], without spot or blemish, and had assumed it from his earthly mother. 13. You ought highly [deeply] to understand this: He
2gave not his disciples the earthly substance, which did but hang to Christ's body, in which he suffered death, which was despised, buffeted, spit upon, scourged, and slain; for then had he given them the mortal flesh; but he gave them his holy body, his holy flesh, which hung also on the cross in the mortal substance, and his holy blood, which was shed together with the mortal, as an immortal flesh and blood which the disciples received into their body, which was put on to the soul as a new body out of Christ's body, whereby the disciples were capable of [receiving] Christ, and became members of his body. 14. You must not understand it thus, that Christ's disciples took a piece of the outward body of Christ, viz. of his earthly body, and put it in their mouths, and chewed it with their outward earthly teeth, and so swallowed it down into their bellies: No, this is apparent, in that he sat with them at the table, and did not divide his outward body. 15. But note, As the Deity had conceived in its will the image which God created in his Virgin of his wonders and wisdom, and brought the flesh and blood together with the eternal tincture, in which the soul liveth, ( viz. the eternal fire which reacheth into the Deity after the substance of the Majesty, and allayeth, filleth, and strengtheneth itself therewith), out of Mary in the virgin into the Holy Ternary, into which the Word gave itself, (as a life in the tincture of the eternity), and
3became the spirit, life, and virtue of that flesh, which sprouteth out of the tincture of that fire of the soul; for the spirit was in the Word, and the Word was the power or virtue, and out of the virtue shone the light of the Majesty, and the kingdom, with the power of this world, hung to it [the spirit] also as its proper own, which was generated out of the Virgin of its wonders and wisdom out of the eternal centre of nature, wherein also Mary stood, with the outward virtue and life, with the outward flesh and blood: So also in such a manner as this hath Christ the true Son of God, [and] our Brother, given to his disciples his body to eat, and his blood to drink.
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.
111. So also they did with the cup; they took it in their hand, and drank of it; for the uppermost of the congregation began, and said to the other, Take the cup and drink the blood of Christ our Lord, which he hath shed for us on the cross for the remission of sins, and commemorate his death, and the shedding of his blood, until he come again to judgment, and bring us into himself. 12. This, dear children, was the true Apostolical practice, and the Last Supper of Christ was even so; for, when Christ had instructed and taught his disciples, he began (after supper, when they had eaten the Paschal Lamb) the right eating of the Paschal Lamb, and gave them that Paschal Lamb [Passover] to eat, of which the first instituted by Moses was but an image and a shadow [or type] ; for he gave them his heavenly body to eat, and his heavenly blood to drink, which he had introduced into Mary's womb in the eternal beginningless heavenly Virgin of God, in the pure chaste immaterial [virginity], without spot or blemish, and had assumed it from his earthly mother. 13. You ought highly [deeply] to understand this: He
2gave not his disciples the earthly substance, which did but hang to Christ's body, in which he suffered death, which was despised, buffeted, spit upon, scourged, and slain; for then had he given them the mortal flesh; but he gave them his holy body, his holy flesh, which hung also on the cross in the mortal substance, and his holy blood, which was shed together with the mortal, as an immortal flesh and blood which the disciples received into their body, which was put on to the soul as a new body out of Christ's body, whereby the disciples were capable of [receiving] Christ, and became members of his body. 14. You must not understand it thus, that Christ's disciples took a piece of the outward body of Christ, viz. of his earthly body, and put it in their mouths, and chewed it with their outward earthly teeth, and so swallowed it down into their bellies: No, this is apparent, in that he sat with them at the table, and did not divide his outward body. 15. But note, As the Deity had conceived in its will the image which God created in his Virgin of his wonders and wisdom, and brought the flesh and blood together with the eternal tincture, in which the soul liveth, ( viz. the eternal fire which reacheth into the Deity after the substance of the Majesty, and allayeth, filleth, and strengtheneth itself therewith), out of Mary in the virgin into the Holy Ternary, into which the Word gave itself, (as a life in the tincture of the eternity), and
3became the spirit, life, and virtue of that flesh, which sprouteth out of the tincture of that fire of the soul; for the spirit was in the Word, and the Word was the power or virtue, and out of the virtue shone the light of the Majesty, and the kingdom, with the power of this world, hung to it [the spirit] also as its proper own, which was generated out of the Virgin of its wonders and wisdom out of the eternal centre of nature, wherein also Mary stood, with the outward virtue and life, with the outward flesh and blood: So also in such a manner as this hath Christ the true Son of God, [and] our Brother, given to his disciples his body to eat, and his blood to drink.
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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