The Texts

The Rosicrucian manifestos (1614-1616)

On this page: what they are · where to read them · which translation · the Fama · the Confessio · where Hermes appears · authors and dates · what they do not prove

What the Rosicrucian manifestos are

The Rosicrucian manifestos are three anonymous pamphlets printed in Germany between 1614 and 1616: the Fama Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1614, in German), the Confessio Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1615, in Latin) and the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz (Strasbourg, 1616, in German). The first two announce a Fraternity of the Rosy Cross founded by one Christian Rosenkreutz and call on the learned of Europe to join a general reform of knowledge. The third is an allegorical story with the same hero, covered on its own page, the Chymical Wedding.

The Fama did not appear alone. The copy digitised by the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden (SLUB) is a 152-page volume whose title page reads “Erstlich Gedruckt zu Cassel, Im Jahr 1614” (first printed at Kassel, in the year 1614) and names no printer. It opens with a German version of a satire by Traiano Boccalini (Waite 1887, p. 35); the Fama follows, then a reply by Adam Haselmayer and a letter dated 14 August 1614, so this copy cannot be earlier than that. The Confessio was printed separately, at the end of a Latin tract by an unknown “Philippus a Gabella”, printed in Kassel by Wilhelm Wessel in 1615. The Chymische Hochzeit came out in Strasbourg at the cost of Lazarus Zetzner’s heirs, “Anno M.DC.XVI”; the “Anno 1459” in its title is the date of the story, not of the printing.

Where to read the Rosicrucian manifestos

Printings of all three from 1614-1616 and the first English edition (London, 1652) are free to read as scans. The modern translations are in copyright.

Which translation to read

For a free English text, the 1652 edition is the one later books reprint, with two caveats. In his address to the reader Vaughan writes that “the Translation of the Fama belongs to an unknown hand” and that the preface is his own, so it is not strictly Vaughan’s translation. And Waite, who reprinted the Confessio after a revision, called the 1652 version “prolix and careless”, made from the later German text rather than the Latin original (1887, p. 85).

To read all three in modern English, use the Rosicrucian Trilogy (2016); its catalogue record says only “translated from the German”, without naming the source of the Latin Confessio. To study them, use Edighoffer’s critical edition (2010) or van Dülmen’s edition (1973). For spelling, layout and marginal notes, open the scans.

What the Fama says

The Fama tells the life of a brother “R. C.”: after two years in Fez he sailed to Spain, expecting the learned to rejoice with him, but there “it was all laughable to them”, and other nations “sang him the same little song” (p. 99, image 103; pages of the Dresden copy, translations ours). Back in Germany he gathers a few brothers. Over a century after his death they find his tomb behind a hidden door inscribed “POST CXX. ANNOS PATEBO”, after 120 years I will open (p. 113, image 117).

It names one modern: “Theophrastus”, that is Paracelsus, who did not join the Fraternity but read its Book M diligently (p. 101). On alchemy it is ambivalent. The brothers promise, figuratively, “more gold than the King of Spain brings from both Indies” (p. 109). Near the end they condemn “the godless and accursed gold-making” (p. 123), yet add that for true philosophers making gold is “a small thing and only a parergon”, a side-task (p. 124, image 128). Their philosophy, they say, is not new: Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras agree with Enoch, Abraham, Moses and Solomon, above all where they agree with the Bible (pp. 122-123). That is a form of prisca theologia, and Hermes is not on the list.

What the Confessio adds

The Confessio supplies the two numbers that encyclopedias repeat. Chapter VI asks the reader to consider the time “since the year 1378, when our Christian was born”, and what he saw in “106 years of life” (image 61 of the BSB copy). The dates 1378-1484 come from the manifesto itself; no other record supports them.

The tract printed before it points to John Dee. The back of its title page carries “De rore caeli et pinguedine terrae det tibi Deus” (Genesis 27:28; image 2), the motto on the title page of Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564). Its first chapters then copy Dee’s opening theorems almost word for word, with a “hieroglyphic star” where Dee has his “hieroglyphic monad” (images 13 and 15-16; Monas, theorems I-III).

Where Hermes appears, and where he does not

Hermes Trismegistus is not named in the Fama or the Confessio. He appears in texts printed around them. The tract printed with the Confessio says that “the mercury of Hermes and of all the philosophers is water”, drawn from the earth by the sun “as father”, turned into rain by the Moon “as mother” and carried by the air “or wind” down to the earth “as nurse” (image 32): the sequence of the Emerald Tablet, though the tract does not name it. On p. 73 of the Chymische Hochzeit a fountain bears the inscription “HERMES PRINCEPS”: Hermes the prince, made “a healing medicine” by God’s counsel and the help of art, flows here; “drink, brothers, and live” (BSB, image 79). That is the alchemists’ Hermes more than the teacher of the Corpus Hermeticum (our reading). On p. 5 Dee’s Monas sign stands beside the invitation poem (image 11); the title page of this copy carries a printer’s device instead.

A defender of the Fraternity brought him in: Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae (Frankfurt, 1617) is subtitled Hermaea seu Mercurii festa, “feasts of Hermes or Mercury”, and its title page puts “Hermes Aegyptius” first among twelve medallions of alchemists (title page). In such books the Rosicrucian name joined alchemy and Hermes, as later in the Musaeum Hermeticum (our reading).

Who wrote them, and when

Only the Chymische Hochzeit has a certain author: Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), whose autobiography lists the Nuptiae Chymicae among what he wrote from 1602-1603 and calls it a ludibrium, a jest (Vita, ed. Rheinwald 1849, p. 10). The Fama and Confessio are unsigned. In 2002 Carlos Gilly, librarian of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam, proposed that their moving spirit was Tobias Hess, a Paracelsian and millenarian in Andreae’s Tübingen circle, with Andreae as the editor who revised the texts in 1608-1609; the historian Helmut Zander finds the arguments good (2004, p. 644). It remains a proposal.

The Fama circulated in manuscript first: Haselmayer said it existed in 1610 (Waite 1887, p. 64), and Zander gives the first printing as late 1613, despite the 1614 on the title page (2004, p. 644). The dates often given for Rosenkreutz are arithmetic: 1378 + 106 = 1484 for his death, and 1484 + 120 = 1604 for the opening of the tomb.

What the manifestos do not prove

They do not prove that Christian Rosenkreutz existed: there is no independent record of him. They do not prove a fraternity before 1614: those who wrote to it got no answer, and Maier devoted a tract, Silentium post clamores (Frankfurt, 1617), to the causes of that silence (title page). They do not show that modern orders descend from them. The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia dates from 1865, AMORC, by its own account, from 1915 and the Lectorium Rosicrucianum from 1935. The theologian Harald Lamprecht, in a 2004 handbook reviewed by Zander, concluded that the Rosicrucian traditions broke off roughly in the first half of the nineteenth century and that the groups he studied were new foundations claiming the old name (Zander 2004, p. 645).

What the record shows is a history of reception: the London edition of 1652, Ezechiel Foxcroft’s 1690 translation of the Chymische Hochzeit as The Hermetick Romance, and Frances Yates’s 1972 thesis that read the manifestos as part of a movement around Frederick V, Elector Palatine, influential but not taken as proven here.

Key facts

Texts	Fama Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1614, German); Confessio Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1615, Latin); Chymische Hochzeit (Strasbourg, 1616, German)
Authors	Anonymous; Chymische Hochzeit by Johann Valentin Andreae (documented); Fama and Confessio: Tobias Hess with Andreae as editor (a proposal, Gilly 2002)
Christian Rosenkreutz	A character of the manifestos; born 1378 and lived 106 years according to the Confessio, ch. VI (later legend treats this as biography)
First in English	The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R: C: (London, 1652); preface by Thomas Vaughan, Fama translated by an unknown hand
Modern editions	van Dülmen 1973 (German); Edighoffer 2010 (critical; commentary vol. 3,1, 2024); Rosicrucian Trilogy, Weiser 2016 (English)
Hermes	Absent from the Fama and Confessio; named in the tract printed with the Confessio (1615), on p. 73 of the Chymische Hochzeit and by Maier (1617)
Checked	6 November 2026, against the scans listed under sources

Fair questions

What are the Rosicrucian manifestos?

Three anonymous pamphlets printed in Germany: the Fama Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1614), the Confessio Fraternitatis (Kassel, 1615, in Latin) and the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (Strasbourg, 1616). The first two announce a Fraternity of the Rosy Cross and a general reform of knowledge; the third is an allegorical story.

Where can I read the Fama Fraternitatis in English?

Free, in the first English edition, The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R: C: (London, 1652), on the Internet Archive, or in A. E. Waite's The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887). The modern translation is in the Rosicrucian Trilogy by Joscelyn Godwin, Christopher McIntosh and Donate Pahnke McIntosh (Weiser, 2016).

Who wrote the Rosicrucian manifestos?

The Chymical Wedding is by Johann Valentin Andreae, who in his autobiography called it a ludibrium, a jest. The Fama and Confessio are unsigned; Carlos Gilly proposed in 2002 that Tobias Hess inspired them, with Andreae as editor. That is a well-argued proposal, not a settled fact.

Was Christian Rosenkreutz a real person?

No independent record of him exists. His dates, born 1378 and 106 years of life, come from chapter VI of the Confessio of 1615, that is, from the manifesto itself.

Do the Rosicrucian manifestos mention Hermes Trismegistus?

The Fama and Confessio do not. Hermes appears in the Latin tract printed with the Confessio in 1615 (“the mercury of Hermes and of all the philosophers”), in a fountain inscribed HERMES PRINCEPS on p. 73 of the Chymical Wedding, and in the Fraternity’s defender Michael Maier, whose Symbola aureae mensae (1617) are “feasts of Hermes or Mercury”.

Sources & further reading

• Allgemeine vnd General Reformation... Beneben der Fama Fraternitatis, Kassel, 1614 [c. 1614], 152 pp.; Dresden, SLUB, Soc.secr.260.k: SLUB Digital Collections (public domain). Pages cited are printed pages; the image number is the page plus four.
• Philippus a Gabella, Secretioris philosophiae consideratio brevis... una cum Confessione Fraternitatis R. C., Kassel: Wilhelm Wessel, 1615: BSB digital copy (NoC-NC 1.0), images 1, 2, 13, 15-16, 32 and 61.
• [Johann Valentin Andreae], Chymische Hochzeit: Christiani Rosencreütz. Anno 1459, Strasbourg: Lazarus Zetzner’s heirs, 1616: BSB digital copy (NoC-NC 1.0), images 7, 11 and 79.
• Johann Valentin Andreae, Vita ab ipso conscripta, ed. F. H. Rheinwald, Berlin, 1849, p. 10: Internet Archive.
• The Fame and Confession of the Fraternity of R: C:, Commonly, of the Rosie Cross, with a preface by Eugenius Philalethes [Thomas Vaughan], London: J. M. for Giles Calvert, 1652: Internet Archive, Getty copy; Library of Congress record.
• Arthur Edward Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians, London: G. Redway, 1887, pp. 35, 64-99: Internet Archive, Toronto copy.
• John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica, Antwerp: Willem Silvius, 1564, title page and theorems I-III (leaf 12): Internet Archive, Wellcome copy (public domain).
• Richard van Dülmen (ed.), Fama fraternitatis (1614), Confessio fraternitatis (1615), Chymische Hochzeit: Christiani Rosencreutz. Anno 1459 (1616), Stuttgart: Calwer, 1973, 124 pp.: Library of Congress record.
• Johann Valentin Andreae, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3: Rosenkreuzerschriften, ed. Roland Edighoffer, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7728-1429-7; vol. 3,1: Kommentar zu den Rosenkreuzerschriften, by Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann and Volkhard Wels, 2024, ISBN 978-3-7728-2821-8: publisher’s page.
• Joscelyn Godwin, Christopher McIntosh and Donate Pahnke McIntosh (trans.), Rosicrucian Trilogy, Newburyport, MA: Weiser Books, 2016, ISBN 978-1-57863-609-9: Library of Congress record.
• Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972 (cited only for her own thesis).
• Helmut Zander, review of Rosenkreuz als europäisches Phänomen im 17. Jahrhundert (Amsterdam, 2002) and of Harald Lamprecht, Neue Rosenkreuzer (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 644-645: PDF, University of Fribourg.
• Michael Maier, Symbola aureae mensae duodecim nationum, hoc est Hermaea seu Mercurii festa, Frankfurt: Jennis, 1617: Internet Archive, Rome BNCR copy (public domain); Maier, Silentium post clamores, Frankfurt: Jennis, 1617: Internet Archive, Wellcome copy.
• Ezechiel Foxcroft (trans.), The Hermetick Romance, or, The Chymical Wedding, London: A. Sowle, 1690: Internet Archive, Getty copy. AMORC’s incorporation in 1915: the order’s history page (all links checked 6 November 2026).