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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.
1"A brief Account of the Life and Conversation of Jacob Behme, afterwards by Learned Men in Germany called Teutonicus. Written in High-Dutch, by Abraham van Franckenberg, one very much acquainted with him. "Jacob Behme was born in the year 1575, at Old Seidenburg, distant about two miles from Gerlitz, a city in Upper Lusatia, highly esteemed by learned men. His parents were Jacob, his father, and Ursula, his mother, both country people. In his youth he kept cattle, and at length by advice of friends was sent to school, where he learnt to read and write, together with the fear of God; afterwards was put to the handicraft trade of a shoemaker. When he became master of his trade, in the year 1594, he married a maid, one Catherine, the daughter of John Kunshman, a butcher of Gerlitz, with whom he lived quietly and well for thirty years together, and had four sons, that learned handicraft trades.
2"Being from his youth inclined to the fear of God, and very diligent in frequenting to hear the preaching of sermons, he was at length stirred up by that saying and promise of our Saviour's, Luke xi. 13, Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him for it, and because of the very many controversies in religion, about which he could not satisfy himself, he was moved, in simplicity of heart or spirit, inwardly, earnestly and incessantly to pray or ask, seek and knock, that he might know or apprehend the truth; whereby then, according to the divine drawing and will in the spirit or heart, he was wrapt into the holy Sabbath,* wherein he continued seven whole days, by his own confession, in highest joy. Afterwards, when he was come to himself, and having put off the folly of youth, he was driven by divine zeal, vehemently to reprove all scandalous, reproachful and blasphemous speeches, and withdraw from all unseemly matters and actings with earnestness, for love to virtue: By which way and life, being contrary to the course of the world, he became but their scorn and derision. During which time he maintained himself with the labour of his hands in the sweat of his brows, till the beginning of the sixth seculum or age, viz. Anno 1600, when he was a second time touched by the divine light, and by a sudden glimpse of a pewter vessel, he was introduced into the inward ground or centre of the hidden nature.
3* Inward Sabbath of rest and satisfaction in his soul. "He, not being yet sufficiently satisfied with this, went forth into the open fields, and there perceived the wonderful or wonderworks of the Creator in the signatures, shapes, figures and qualities or properties of all created things, very clearly and plainly laid open; whereupon, being filled with exceeding joy, kept silence, praising God, and so contentedly satisfied himself therewith for a while. "But, according to God's holy counsel and determination, who manageth his works in secret, about ten years after, viz. in the year 1610, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, he was a third time stirred up and renewed by God. Whereupon, being so enlightened, with such great grace bestowed upon him, he could not put it out of his mind, nor strive against his God, therefore did, by small means, and without the help of any books, but only the Holy Scriptures, write secretly for himself these books following Here follows a list of the works as printed at the end of the 1647 edition, and reproduced at the end of the present volume. Sparrow then continues: "In these he hath left so noble and precious a talent and treasure, for the setting forth God's honour and glory, and for the promoting man's salvation, both for the present and for the future times, that since the times of the Apostles higher and deeper grounded Mysteries concerning the Deity have scarce been revealed.
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.
1"A brief Account of the Life and Conversation of Jacob Behme, afterwards by Learned Men in Germany called Teutonicus. Written in High-Dutch, by Abraham van Franckenberg, one very much acquainted with him. "Jacob Behme was born in the year 1575, at Old Seidenburg, distant about two miles from Gerlitz, a city in Upper Lusatia, highly esteemed by learned men. His parents were Jacob, his father, and Ursula, his mother, both country people. In his youth he kept cattle, and at length by advice of friends was sent to school, where he learnt to read and write, together with the fear of God; afterwards was put to the handicraft trade of a shoemaker. When he became master of his trade, in the year 1594, he married a maid, one Catherine, the daughter of John Kunshman, a butcher of Gerlitz, with whom he lived quietly and well for thirty years together, and had four sons, that learned handicraft trades.
2"Being from his youth inclined to the fear of God, and very diligent in frequenting to hear the preaching of sermons, he was at length stirred up by that saying and promise of our Saviour's, Luke xi. 13, Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him for it, and because of the very many controversies in religion, about which he could not satisfy himself, he was moved, in simplicity of heart or spirit, inwardly, earnestly and incessantly to pray or ask, seek and knock, that he might know or apprehend the truth; whereby then, according to the divine drawing and will in the spirit or heart, he was wrapt into the holy Sabbath,* wherein he continued seven whole days, by his own confession, in highest joy. Afterwards, when he was come to himself, and having put off the folly of youth, he was driven by divine zeal, vehemently to reprove all scandalous, reproachful and blasphemous speeches, and withdraw from all unseemly matters and actings with earnestness, for love to virtue: By which way and life, being contrary to the course of the world, he became but their scorn and derision. During which time he maintained himself with the labour of his hands in the sweat of his brows, till the beginning of the sixth seculum or age, viz. Anno 1600, when he was a second time touched by the divine light, and by a sudden glimpse of a pewter vessel, he was introduced into the inward ground or centre of the hidden nature.
3* Inward Sabbath of rest and satisfaction in his soul. "He, not being yet sufficiently satisfied with this, went forth into the open fields, and there perceived the wonderful or wonderworks of the Creator in the signatures, shapes, figures and qualities or properties of all created things, very clearly and plainly laid open; whereupon, being filled with exceeding joy, kept silence, praising God, and so contentedly satisfied himself therewith for a while. "But, according to God's holy counsel and determination, who manageth his works in secret, about ten years after, viz. in the year 1610, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, he was a third time stirred up and renewed by God. Whereupon, being so enlightened, with such great grace bestowed upon him, he could not put it out of his mind, nor strive against his God, therefore did, by small means, and without the help of any books, but only the Holy Scriptures, write secretly for himself these books following Here follows a list of the works as printed at the end of the 1647 edition, and reproduced at the end of the present volume. Sparrow then continues: "In these he hath left so noble and precious a talent and treasure, for the setting forth God's honour and glory, and for the promoting man's salvation, both for the present and for the future times, that since the times of the Apostles higher and deeper grounded Mysteries concerning the Deity have scarce been revealed.
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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