Some background:
The Age of Enlightenment was a period of renewed intellectualism from the 1600s to the 1700s, spurred on by the Scientific Revolution;
It emphasized rationality, philosophy, and materialist progress;
It competed with the Protestant Reformation to replace Catholic government;
America was seen as a battleground between these European movements.
Reason to rule
Colonization begged a question: by what right did the occupier rule its subjects?
The Catholic Church had developed its own Doctrine of Discovery for centuries, one papal bull at a time, which granted the right to invade, subjugate, and plunder non-Catholic nations; and quite without mercy. These privileges were offered specifically to those who served the Vatican, such as Portugal and Spain. But with the Protestant Reformation in full effect, another principle had to emerge. The Enlightenment provided what the Bible could not. It would claim that Reason itself was sufficient.
Protestant nations wanted to seem more righteous than the Catholic Church, but they did not want to sacrifice their ambitions. The printing press and Bible translations generated an awareness of the hypocrisy of the Vatican, but how would the Protestants avoid the same labels? Could they somehow steal foreign land without similar arguments of divine justification? Even the most ancient pagan kings claimed to be spurred on by their gods, for they did not have enough hubris to say that their own personal glory was sufficient to rule the world. The Muslims likewise conquered in the name of their god, and enforced their own religious laws. But the Lamb of God was not an imperialist, in truth. The Protestants could hardly point to Constantine or Charlemagne for their inspiration, for they were both Roman loyalists to the end. Throughout the entire medieval period, Europe’s kings had claimed to have bloodlines which traced back to Charlemagne and relied on the Catholic priesthood to ordain them, but now they were struggling to find support from the Good Book.
Those who read the New Testament without papal blinders on were discovering that Christianity stood in direct opposition to colonial behavior. It was meant to be a religion of peace, generosity, service, and love, with voluntary conversion by hearing and believing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Roman Empire of Christ’s day was seen as an oppressive burden on the necks of the Jews, taxing them into desperation. Jesus himself famously did not advocate rebellion as a response, but neither did he endorse the political system. In fact, there was no political dimension to the Christian faith, and neither was it a social program. It was a radical separatist movement, with an eye on prophecy, and its earliest members experimented with communal living and local assemblies, without any priesthood at all.
As the Scientific Revolution progressed, Christian researchers glorified God for their discoveries. But their innovations were generally commissioned by royalty—and thus expected to be used for the national interest—and coveted by the merchant class. They salivated over technological advantages. New inventions and the proliferation of exotic goods meant more trade, more profit, and more ambitious voyages. Stoking envy has always been their game. Gunpowder, compasses, telescopes, and other tools were making sea travel and colonization easier than ever, so that an arms race between Catholics and Protestants was inevitable.
Rosicrucians
In the center of this crisis was Francis Bacon, the English intellectual. I do agree with the theory that Bacon was the black sheep of the Tudor family, the disowned son of the “virgin” Queen Elizabeth, deprived of his rightful inheritance of the English throne; and that he waged a crusade of alternative power as a means of proving his worth to history. He pioneered the scientific method, calling for a new class of researchers to conduct smaller, controlled experiments, and document their findings for others to replicate. Everyone who adhered to his methodology would have to prove their concepts empirically. Eventually they would have to develop their discovered principles into a practical application, not keep them in the realm of theory. Over time, these small innovations would accumulate into a body of knowledge that would revolutionize man’s relationship with nature.
But Bacon was no materialist. He was a spiritual guru, outwardly professing biblical Christianity with deft rhetoric, while also speaking in rather mystical terms about the nature of reality. The atomic theory of matter was already in ancient Greece, but Bacon leaned toward the theory that spirits pervaded all matter, with their own elemental personalities determining the relationship between objects. His eagerness to trigger an explosion of knowledge screams from the page when reading his Novus Organum,1 although he himself was hopelessly overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done. He did not see a distinction between spiritual and material refinement of ideas, and hoped to integrate Christ’s revelations into all other existing wisdom.
For these reasons and more, it has been alleged that Francis Bacon was the secret founder of the Rosicrucian Order, which was not a proper organization with any history, but a new invitation to scholars, aristocrats, and merchants to partake in a transnational effort to push science and occultism to its limits. It was the exact kind of universal cooperation Bacon wanted. The existence of the “Rosy Cross” was announced in pamphlets and posters anonymously in a few cities, as if it were an existing brotherhood that one could discover by seeking it out. Whoever organized this effort, the plan was to kindle rumors, provoke discussion, and eventually lure the most qualified candidates into the web of those who were already participating. To the extent that their plan succeeded, it would have become a decentralized secret society of Christian mystics, like Gnostics, sharing their results and striving toward a new age of enlightenment; of discoveries which were both spiritual and scientific.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Winter Christian to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.