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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.
116. They suppose, when they can with power rescue and keep their opinions, and though indeed the whoredom in their opinion is laid naked, that it is weakened and blemished; yet they will have their Dinah to be taken for a virgin, and though her shame of whoredom be open to the daylight, yet they will defend the same with the sword, and with slaughter. As we see before our eyes, and the present strife intimates no less, but that it is manifest that Dinah is become a whore, viz. titulary Christendom that plays the whore in the presence of God, and has lost her virgin chastity, and the purity of her conscience. And so at present the brethren of this Dinah fight for her, and will preserve her honour and reputation with the sword and with killing; and will murder all those who do deflower and defame their Dinah. 17. This Dinah is at present nothing else but the stone churches and great colleges of their ministers, wherein men use the name of Christ, but seek thereby only their own honour, voluptuousness, and good days,l how a man may be honoured in the world. 1 Fat days.
218. For the true Apostolic temple is the temple of Jesus Christ, viz. the new man, who lives in righteousness and purity before God, who walks in humility and in the simplicity of Christ. And his ministers are such as do declare the peace in the love of Jesus Christ, who labour that the deflowered Dinah might be married with Shechem, and that Hamor and Shechem with their males might also become Christians; who leave the sword in its sheath, and teach with the meek and gentle spirit of Jesus Christ; and show instead of the murdering sword the spirit of cleansing, how this deflowered Dinah might get Christian honour again, and be married to her Bridegroom. 19. Behold, O Christendom! the spirit has set this before you in the figure of the twelve patriarchs, and signifies that you would do thus: not that you should do it. Though this strife must come, that the true children of Christ might be exercised and made manifest; otherwise if no strife did arise among the Christians, all wicked men could appear as Christians. But the strife makes it manifest that the false ground of verbal Christians is brought to light, and they are distinguished from the true children of Christ; which will be also a witness against them at the Last Day of judgement. 20. Man's true Christianity stands in the inward ground of the soul in the ground of man, not in the ostentation and fashions of this world, but in the power of well-doing in the spirit and conscience.
321. The strife wherewith a true Christian strives is only the spirit of righteousness, which casts away from it the falsehood and wickedness in flesh and blood, and suffers and endures all things willingly for Christ's sake, who dwells in it; that it may not live to itself; and please itself; and have satisfaction in itself; and triumph with the earthly Lucifer; but that he please God his Creator in Christ Jesus. 22. He has nothing in this world to strive for, for nothing is his own. For in Christ he is not of this world, but as the Scripture says, Our conversation is in heaven (Phil. iii. 20). All things for which and wherewith he strives is about the earthly, voluptuous, fleshly Lucifer, in the mortal flesh and blood. For Christ says, His kingdom is not of this world (John xviii. 36). So also a Christian's kingdom, so far as he is a Christian, is not of this world, but in Christ in God. 23. Therefore now all the strife of Christians is only about their Dinah, viz. about their fleshly whoredom. A Christian ought not to strive otherwise than in spirit and power against the ways of unrighteousness and falsehood. 24. Outward war that Christians make is heathenish, and is done for the bestial mortal man's sake. For immortality cannot be attained or kept with the sword and forces, but with prayer, and with entering into the fear of God. But the earthly Lucifer strives about the belly, and about worldly honour and pleasure, wherein Christ is not; but
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.
116. They suppose, when they can with power rescue and keep their opinions, and though indeed the whoredom in their opinion is laid naked, that it is weakened and blemished; yet they will have their Dinah to be taken for a virgin, and though her shame of whoredom be open to the daylight, yet they will defend the same with the sword, and with slaughter. As we see before our eyes, and the present strife intimates no less, but that it is manifest that Dinah is become a whore, viz. titulary Christendom that plays the whore in the presence of God, and has lost her virgin chastity, and the purity of her conscience. And so at present the brethren of this Dinah fight for her, and will preserve her honour and reputation with the sword and with killing; and will murder all those who do deflower and defame their Dinah. 17. This Dinah is at present nothing else but the stone churches and great colleges of their ministers, wherein men use the name of Christ, but seek thereby only their own honour, voluptuousness, and good days,l how a man may be honoured in the world. 1 Fat days.
218. For the true Apostolic temple is the temple of Jesus Christ, viz. the new man, who lives in righteousness and purity before God, who walks in humility and in the simplicity of Christ. And his ministers are such as do declare the peace in the love of Jesus Christ, who labour that the deflowered Dinah might be married with Shechem, and that Hamor and Shechem with their males might also become Christians; who leave the sword in its sheath, and teach with the meek and gentle spirit of Jesus Christ; and show instead of the murdering sword the spirit of cleansing, how this deflowered Dinah might get Christian honour again, and be married to her Bridegroom. 19. Behold, O Christendom! the spirit has set this before you in the figure of the twelve patriarchs, and signifies that you would do thus: not that you should do it. Though this strife must come, that the true children of Christ might be exercised and made manifest; otherwise if no strife did arise among the Christians, all wicked men could appear as Christians. But the strife makes it manifest that the false ground of verbal Christians is brought to light, and they are distinguished from the true children of Christ; which will be also a witness against them at the Last Day of judgement. 20. Man's true Christianity stands in the inward ground of the soul in the ground of man, not in the ostentation and fashions of this world, but in the power of well-doing in the spirit and conscience.
321. The strife wherewith a true Christian strives is only the spirit of righteousness, which casts away from it the falsehood and wickedness in flesh and blood, and suffers and endures all things willingly for Christ's sake, who dwells in it; that it may not live to itself; and please itself; and have satisfaction in itself; and triumph with the earthly Lucifer; but that he please God his Creator in Christ Jesus. 22. He has nothing in this world to strive for, for nothing is his own. For in Christ he is not of this world, but as the Scripture says, Our conversation is in heaven (Phil. iii. 20). All things for which and wherewith he strives is about the earthly, voluptuous, fleshly Lucifer, in the mortal flesh and blood. For Christ says, His kingdom is not of this world (John xviii. 36). So also a Christian's kingdom, so far as he is a Christian, is not of this world, but in Christ in God. 23. Therefore now all the strife of Christians is only about their Dinah, viz. about their fleshly whoredom. A Christian ought not to strive otherwise than in spirit and power against the ways of unrighteousness and falsehood. 24. Outward war that Christians make is heathenish, and is done for the bestial mortal man's sake. For immortality cannot be attained or kept with the sword and forces, but with prayer, and with entering into the fear of God. But the earthly Lucifer strives about the belly, and about worldly honour and pleasure, wherein Christ is not; but
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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