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LIGHT 

ON 

THE RENAISSANCE 

 A NEW LIGHT ON 
THE RENAISSANCE 

DISPLAYED IN CONTEMPORARY 
EMBLEMS/ BY HAROLD BAYLEY 

All Rights Reserved 

ILLUSTRATED 

WITH REPRODUCTIONS 

OF NUMEROUS EMBLEMS 

LONDON: J. M.DENT & CO: MCMIX 

ALDINE HOUSE: BEDFORD STREET 

 TO 

MY WIFE 

 "It is a truth perpetually, that accumulated facts lying in disorder begin 
to assume some order if an hypothesis is thrown among them." 

—HERBERT SPENCER. 

" What does a ' proof mean ? A proof means destroying the isolation 
of an observed fact or experience by linking it on with all pre-existent knowledge ; 
it means the bringing it into its place in the system of knowledge ; and it affords 
the same sort of gratification as finding the right place for a queer-shaped piece in 
a puzzle map."—Sir OLIVER LODGE. 

CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER I 
PAPERMAKING AND THE ALBIGENSES 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

CHAPTER II 

CHAPTER III 

CHAPTER IV 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION AND PREACHING 

CHAPTER V 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

CHAPTER VI 
"THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

CHAPTER VII 

THE KABBALAH 

FACE 

I 

23 

55 

82 

96 

vu 

 iii NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

VIH 

CHAPTER VIII 
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 

CHAPTER IX 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

PAGE 

III 

121 

CHAPTER X 
THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 
THE RENAISSANCE 

CONCLUSION 
NOTES 
APPENDIX 
INDEX 

CHAPTER XI 

CHAPTER XII 

181 

197 

214 

233 

262 

265 

INTRODUCTION 

MY aim in these pages has been to lay before the 
general reader certain remarkable facts relating 
especially to mediaeval papermaking and print 
ing, but possessing an interest to the world at large. 

The early history of Printing has engaged an enormous 
amount of attention, and rightly so, for Printing was the 
handmaid to the New Learning, and the means by which 
the Reformation was accomplished. The epic of Paper- 
making remains, however, yet to be written, and my 
investigations have been sufficient to show that when 
finished it will be a chronicle of deep and enduring 
interest. 

From the time of the Middle Ages papermakers had a 
custom of branding into almost every sheet of their paper 
certain peculiar designs. With modifications and additions 
these curious and complicated watermarks were employed 
in common throughout Europe, and some have survived 
to the present day. They form an unbroken chain of 
ocular evidence stretching from about 1282 to the time 
when to all intents machinery superseded the older fashioned 
method of making paper by hand. No other industry can 
show such phenomena as the multiplicity of its trade signs, 
the persistent survival of ancient religious symbols, and the 
singular, if not unique, custom of the same devices being 
used in common by rival manufacturers. Underlying 
these facts are problems which neither bibliographers nor 

 2 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

present day papermakers have hitherto been able to solve. 
Several writers have recognised the emblematic character 
of papermarks, but nol serious attempt has been made to 
explain the meaning of the multifarious marks or to account 
satisfactorily for their employment. 

The study and comparison of many thousands of 
mediaeval watermarks enables me to assert with confidence 
that not only are they emblematic of ideas current at 
different periods, but that they convey a coherent and 
romantic story. Briefly this is as follows :— 

In the Dark Ages there existed in the South of France 
a premature civilisation far in advance of that in the rest 
of Europe. Among the arts and industries that flourished 
in Provence and the surrounding districts, papermaking 
was one of the foremost. Not only was this district the 
cradle of European papermaking, but for many centuries 
it remained the centre of the industry. 

The freedom and prosperity of Provence attracted large 
numbers of persecuted Jews and heretics who took refuge 
there, and by their industry and intellect augmented the 
power and influence of the country. So deeply, indeed, 
did heresy enter into the politics of Provence, that in 1209 
the Church of Rome considered it necessary to launch a 
crusade against the infected district. During a period of 
twenty years, the land underwent a barbarous purging. 
Its towns and villages were sacked, and the heretical 
inhabitants either extirpated or driven into perpetual exile. 
Those who escaped carried with them a passionate affection 
for their destroyed Fatherland, and an undying hatred 
against the tyranny of the Church of Rome. 

It will be shown that from the appearance of the first 

1 Except one valuable work to which I shall allude later. 

INTRODUCTION 3 

known watermark in 1282 these mysterious marks are speak 
ing broadly the traditional emblems of Provence. From the 
fact that fundamentally the same designs were employed 
all over Europe, we can deduce the inference that Provençal 
refugees carried their art throughout Europe, just in the 
same way as at a later period and under somewhat similar 
circumstances the persecuted Huguenots carried new in 
dustries into strange countries. It will also be shown that 
the same code which unlocks the obscurities of papermarks 
elucidates the problems of printer's marks, and evidence will 
be brought forward that papermakers and printers were 
originally in close touch with each other, held similar views, 
and were associated in identical aims. 

It may be objected that emblem reading is an inexact 
science, and that an ingenious mind can froth up an im 
posing superstructure upon an unsubstantial basis. To avoid 
this danger, I have, as far as possible, consulted contemporary 
symbolists such as Durandus of Provence, and Valerian, 
whose vast Hieroglyphicorum was published at Leyden in 
1624. The interpretations put forward are therefore not 
airy suppositions, but the unquestionable sense that certain 
emblems were once understood to convey. In order that the 
narrative may be not burdened and disjointed by footnotes, 
all references have been relegated to the end of the book. 
In cases where I have presumed to add up 2 and 2, 
the resultant 4 has been clearly indicated as my own 
calculation. 

From the time when History first emerges from the 
Unknown, it is clear that Allegory has played a vital and pre 
eminent part in human thought. Of Indian and Egyptian 
symbolism it is unnecessary to speak beyond noting that 
many of the emblems employed by papermakers are 

 4 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

traceable to these and other sources equally remote. A 
fact too little appreciated at the present day is the vast 
extent to which emblems and emblematic literature engaged 
the attention of mediaeval Europe. Allegory, as says Pro 
fessor Courthope, gradually produced a kind of intellectual 
atmosphere necessary to the life of the Middle Ages. It is, 
as will be demonstrated, a key that not only enables us 
to unclasp hitherto sealed writings, but to unravel a long 
series of hitherto mysterious papermarks and printers' 
marks. That mediaeval artisans should systematically 
have scaled the heights of Allegory will be surprising to 
not a few; nevertheless, it will be remembered that—to 
mention but two conspicuous instances—Hans Sachs, the 
famous poet of Nuremburg, and Jacob Böhme, the equally 
well-known mystic philosopher, both practised the humble 
trade of cobblers. Indeed it is abundantly clear that 
mediaeval craftsmen were adepts in the art of symbolism. 
Papermakers and printers alike took up a venerable 
thread, and, by weaving it into their workmanship, 
enshrined thereby their traditions and their aspirations. 
Papermarks and printers' ornaments are thus intellectual 
heirlooms that not only crystallise many beautiful ideas, 
but are historical documents throwing unexpected side 
lights on the obscurity of the Middle Ages. From them 
it is clear that the scattered civilisation of Provence reunited 
in secrecy, and that in the course of time it reimposed its 
influence upon Europe. That this is no exaggeration will 
be conceded by those who realise the momentous sway 
exercised over European politics by the wandering and 
influential Troubadours. For centuries the Troubadours 
of Provence filled the rôle now occupied by the Press. 
Roving throughout Europe, they kept aflame the hatred 

INTRODUCTION 5 

against Rome and the love of Art and Literature that 
was traditional to the Midi. Nothing is more astonishing 
than the influence which must have been exercised over 
the minds of mediaeval craftsmen by the cycle of Romances 
sown and disseminated by the Troubadours. The 
evidence is scattered in the thousand forms of papermarks 
illustrating the St Grail, the Romaunt of the Rose, and 
other heretical legends. The fact that these watermarked 
designs were constantly modified and embellished with new 
emblems, is sufficient to prove that the men who made the 
changes were conscious of the symbolism underlying them, 
and that this existed not merely as a dead tradition, but 
was a virile and persistent force. 

The crusade of 1209 by which Provence was so cruelly 
purged, was followed during the successive centuries by 
others equally ruthless. From her inception the Church of 
Rome was vexed by manifold forms of heresy, and was 
almost perpetually at war with her opponents. The names 
by which these were known varied at various epochs, but 
the contending forces remained more or less identical. 
** These heretic foxes " as one of the Popes acutely re 
marked, " have different faces, but they all hang together 
by the tails." In England we called them Lollards, and 
passed the statute De Hœretico comburendo for their ex 
tinction. It will be borne in mind that the heretical sects, 
which, to quote an ecclesiastical expression, infected Europe 
like a leprosy, flourished almost solely among the artisan 
classes. When France expelled the Huguenots she cut 
herself off from the most industrious and most valuable of 
her children. The motto of the persecuted Waldenses is 
said to have been Laborare est orareì and historians are 
agreed that the phrase "Work is prayer" truly summed 

 6 

NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

up their character. There is therefore nothing surprising 
that papermaking and printing should alike have fallen 
largely, if not solely, into heretical hands. 

The evidence from trade-marks proves that it did so, 
and it proves also the reality of what several writers have 
surmised, i.e. that there existed a secret league against the 
encroachments of the Church of Rome. ** Meiners," says 
Hallam, " has gone so far as to suppose a real confederacy 
to have been formed by the friends of truth and learning 
through Germany and France to support Reuchlin against 
the mendicant orders, and to overthrow by means of this 
controversy 1 the embattled legions of ignorance." 

Now the chronicles of papermaking, and of her 
younger sister printing, form the epic of this 300 year 
warfare between Light and Darkness. For centuries the 
artisan classes maintained a resistance against the abuses of 
authority, which cannot but excite our awe and astonish 
ment. Hounded from country to country, the persecuted 
heretics conformed outwardly to their surroundings, but 
cherished in secrecy a plan for the disenthralment of 
Thought, which as opportunities offered, was carried per 
sistently into effect. While on the one hand they were at 
constant warfare with the official custodians of Christianity, 
they exemplified in themselves the ethics of Christ Himself, 
and of primitive Christianity. 

It is supposed that what we call the Renaissance 
was the natural growth of the human intellect and its 
inevitable clashing with the tyranny of Ecclesiasticism. 
On the contrary, it will be seen that the Renaissance was 
organised and fostered for some centuries before it became 

1 The particular controversy of which Hallam is speaking, will be dealt with in 
due course. 

INTRODUCTION 7 

manifest. It is beyond my scope to attempt anything in 
the nature of a history of the Renaissance, my aim being 
rather to point out the footprints left by the humanists who 
made it, footprints that have been overlooked because 
hitherto their significance has not been understood. 

 CHAPTER I 

PAPERMAKING AND THE ALBIGENSES 

PAPERMARKS being objects that are somewhat 
off the everyday track of knowledge, it may be 
of interest to describe briefly the ancient method 
of their production. 

In the illustration below, the man standing at the tub, 

From G. A. BÖCKLER'S "Theatrum Machinarum," Folio, Nuremberg, i66z. 

1586. (From The Bmk: Bouchot. By permission 
of Messrs H. Grevel & Co.) 

or " vat " as it is technically called, is the papermaker. The 
object in his hands is a wire tray with wooden rims. This 
implement is known as a " mould." The papermaker dips 

 io NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

it into his vat of paper pulp, picks up a thin layer, gives 
the mould a twist to interlace the fibres, and the result 
when pressed and dried is a sheet of paper. 

A watermark is a device produced by fastening the 
desired design in strong wire on to the bottom of the 
mould. The pulp takes the impress of this projecting wire 
and the result remains visible in the finished sheet. 

At the present day, watermarks, consisting usually of 
the name of the papermaker, accompanied in some cases 
by a distinctive device, serve as trade-marks. One of the 
many peculiarities about ancient marks is the fact that the 
same devices with trifling variations were used simul 
taneously by hundreds of different mills all over Europe. 
The mark of a Bull's Head, for instance, had an immense 
vogue for more than two hundred years. The ** Pot " 
mark was popular for upwards of three centuries, and the 
" Fleur de lys," which is still in use to-day, can claim an 
even more venerable ancestry. 

There has recently been published in Geneva a 
Dictionary of Watermarksl containing 16,112 facsimiles 
of various designs employed from about the year 1282 
until 1600. Monsieur Briquet's monumental work repre 
sents the last word on papermarks viewed simply as 
trade-marks. The purpose underlying the employment of 
particular designs has hitherto remained an enigma, and 
Monsieur Briquet makes no new attempt to solve it. 
" We shall," he says, " leave on one side the numerous 
problems that arise as to the significance and employment 
of papermarks. Conjectures are worthless unless one can 

1 Les Filigranes : Dictionnaire Historique des Marques ¿ht Papier dès leur 
Apparition -vers 1282 jusqu'en i6oo. C. M. Briquet, 4 vols, folio. London, 
B. Quaritch. 

PAPERMAKING AND THE ALBIGENSES n 

confirm them with historic support." Unexcelled as a 
catalogue of facts, M. Briquet's work remains, therefore, 
professedly no more than a bald chronicle of unexplained 
designs. In his introductory chapter the author does me 
the honour to discuss at some length the proposition which 
I maintained in a magazine article some years ago, that 
watermarks (whatever trade purpose they may subsequently 
have served), were originally EMBLEMS, and as such 
possessed very definite meanings that beckon to us for 
solution. M. Briquet concedes that many of the subjects 
employed are capable of bearing symbolic interpretation, 
but he maintains that it rests with me to prove that it was 
because of these meanings that the marks became customary. 

I accept this challenge, and will endeavour to show that 
at the vivifying touch of symbolism, M. Briquet's 16,112 
skeletons assume flesh, and become animated with a human 
interest. 

The history of early papermaking is meagre and 
inadequate. The Art is believed to have been introduced 
into Europe either from the East by returning Crusaders, 
or from the Moors, perhaps through Spain or Sicily. 

It is a fact, the significance of which has hitherto been 
unnoted, that the early papermaking districts were precisely 
those that were strongholds of the heretical sects known as 
the Albigenses. The word " Albigenses " is a term applied 
loosely to the various pre-Reformation reformers whose 
strongholds stretched from Northern Spain across the 
southern provinces of France to Lombardy and Tuscany. 
In Spain and France they were known as Albigenses from 
Albi the name of one of their prominent towns. In the 
Alpine provinces they were called Waldenses, from Peter 
Waldo, one of their most conspicuous members. In Italy, 

 12 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

History alludes to them under the terms Cathari or 
Patarini. 

The character of these sectarians was one of the most 
remarkable in the record of civilisation. It was the actual 
practice of New Testament precepts, indeed, the Waldenses 
claimed to be the direct descendants of the early Christians, 
many of whom it is supposed fled into the Alpine valleys 
to escape the persecutions of Nero and Diocletian. Their 
aim was the curtailment of the Papal authority and the 
promotion of a purer Gospel. The wealth of the Catholic 
clergy, their greed for temporal power, and other abuses of 
the times were the objects of assiduous denunciation by the 
Albigenses, who maintained that they alone possessed the 
true secret of Christianity, having had it handed down to 
them traditionally from the times of the Apostles. 

The Albigenses were greatly beloved by their neigh 
bours. Their industry, morality, and general sweetness 
of character, led to their being known proverbially as " the 
good people." Their Italian name " Cathari " is from a 
Greek root signifying "the pure ones." The keynote of 
the Albigensian character was industry, and it is said 
that the axiom "Work is Prayer" had its origin among 
them. 

It is noteworthy that among the roll of mediaeval paper- 
makers, we find names which epitomise the Albigensian 

BQED 

FIG. i.—Papermark, 1767. 

character of "Good people"; such, for instance, as Le 
Bon, Bon, Bonamour, Bonfoyì Dieuayde^ D'iodati (the 

L 
t 

PAPERMAKING AND THE ALBIGENSES 13 

Gift of God) and Sauveur. The Monsieur C. LE BON, 
who made paper in 1767, may reasonably be regarded as a 
descendant of the original " Good people." 

In the seventeenth century there was a large trade in 
paper done at the French town now known as Dieulouard. 
Paper emanating thence was watermarked in a variety of 
forms, such as DUAULEGEAD, DULEGARD, DUAULEGEARD. 
In his Literary History of the Waldenses·, Montet comments 
upon the continual variation in orthography which was a 
Waldensian characteristic, instancing : NUIT, NOYT, NOIT ; 
EYSEMPLE, ESEMPLE, EXEMPLE, and other examples. Now 
the old name for Dieulouard was Dieu le garde, a term the 
origin of which is not known, and it is, I think, evident, 
putting together the three facts of paper-making, varied 
orthography, and the characteristic " God Guard It," that 
the town of Dieulouard was originally a little Albigensian 
colony of papermakers. 

There is another fact that—to deal at present with 
purely external evidence—seems to associate the Albigenses 
with paper-making. In Italy they were known not only 
as Cathari, the pure ones, but as " Patarini." This is said 
to have been derived from pates a word meaning old linen. 
There was a street in Milan called Pataria or the rag 
market, where the Cathari congregated so conspicuously, 
that they were dubbed * Patarini.' It is difficult to under 
stand why the rag markets were proverbially so popular 
with them, unless they met there for the purpose of buying 
their raw material for papermaking, i.e. rags. 

But the evidence from watermarks lifts conjecture into 
certainty, and demonstrates that it was unquestionably 
among " the pure ones " and " the good people " that 
papermaking first flourished in Europe. 

 CHAPTER II 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS 

AN ever-present dream of the Albigenses was to bring 
in the Millennium. Their method to this end 
was firstly the reformation of their own souls, and 
secondly the rendering of affectionate help to their neigh 
bours. At times their aspirations took a more ambitious 
flight. The third of the Crusades—that with which Scott 
deals in The Talisman—is said to have covered a deeply 
laid scheme aided by the Templars and the Troubadours, 
to set up a purified rival to the Church of Rome with 
headquarters at Jerusalem. 

One of the earliest watermarks yet discovered is a globe 
surmounted by the Cross.1 In Figs. 2 and 3, we have 
further emblems of the universal reign of Love and 
Concord. 

FIG. 2.—18th century. 

FIG. 3.—18th century. 

It will be observed from the dates under* each facsimile, 
that extensive periods of time were covered by similar 

ι This emblem has persisted until the present day, and may be seen at the 
summit of Fig. 408 (p. zi7), which is a facsimile of the modern mark in foolscap 
writing papers. 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS 15 

emblems. These dates do not denote the first or the last 
appearance, but refer simply to the examples here repro 
duced. It may be stated roughly that every design found 
in watermarks was used in common by many different 
papermakers in localities thousands of miles apart, and 
(subject to variations and recombinations of the same 
elements) for many hundreds of years. 

FIGS. 4, 5, and 6.—151(1 century. 

Figs. 4, 5 and 6 are Unicorns. This animal was 
essentially, I think, the emblem of the Cathari, the pure 
ones. It was the symbol of Purity and Strength, and is 
often represented in company with a Virgin holding a 
dove. Basil Valentine, the Alchemist (c. 1400), tells 
us in The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony^ that the 
Unicorn was so intensely pure, that it repelled things 
noxious. He recommends the experiment of forming a 

 16 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

circle with a strip of Unicorn's flesh, and placing therein, say, 
a spider. He assures us the spider will be unable to escape 
from its pure environment. In Reusner's Emblems (1581) 
the unicorn is made the ensign for the motto " Faith 
undefiled victorious." 

Fio. 7.—14th century. 

Fio. 8.—i4th century. 

Fio. 9.—1699. 

Fio. io.—ijth century. 

Figs. 7, 8, 9 and io are stags, again, I think, emblems of 
the Pure Ones. The stag was the symbol of solitude and 
purity of life. It was also regarded as a type of religious 
aspiration, probably from the passage in the Psalms " Like 
as the Hart panteth for the waterbrooks." There was an 
old belief that the stag, though a timorous creature, had a 
ruthless antipathy to snakes, which it laboured to destroy ; 
hence it came to be regarded as an apt emblem of the 
Christian fighting against evils. It was sometimes regarded 
as a symbol of Eternity. The palm branches in Fig. 9 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS I? 

typify Victory. In Fig. 7 will be seen the Cross—evidence 
that some sacred meaning underlay the employment of this 
stag design. 

Fto. ii.—1399. 

Fig. 11 represents the Vera icon, or True Image. The 
legend runs that the Saviour on the way to Calvary was 
met by the woman Berenice. Filled with compassion, she 
wiped His face with her kerchief, which miraculously 
retained an imprint of the Divine features. Whereupon 
Berenice was re-christened St. Veronica—an anagram of 
Vera Icon. 

FIG. ii. — 

century. 

Fio. 13—1477. 

Fig. 12 is manifestly a saint or an angel, and Fig. 13 
a scallop-shell emblem of a pilgrim. The reader will recall 
Sir Walter Raleigh's lines :— 

" Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, 
My staff of faith to walk upon, 
My scrip of joy, immortal diet, 
My bottle of salvation, 

 18 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

My gown of glory, hope's true gage ; 
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage. 

My soul, like quiet palmer, 

Travelleth towards the land of heaven ; 
Over the silver mountains, 
Where spring the nectar fountains." 

Figs. 14, 15, 16 and 17 are Jacob's ladders. The 
Albigenses regarded this ladder as a symbol of virtues and 

FIG. 14.—1509. 

FIG. ij.—1400. 

FIG. 16.—1506. 

FIG. 17.— 

good works, by the practice of which Earth is brought 
into close touch with Heaven. In their literature they 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS 

19 
" Fear 

refer generally to a ladder of thirty steps, the first 
of the Lord," the second " Charity," and so forth. 

In Fig. 14 observe the angel standing at the ladder's 
summit. 

FIG. 18.—1419. 

FIG. 19.—1744. 

Fig. 18 represents the sacred TAU, the symbol of sal 
vation, and the mark of election mentioned in Ezekiel— 
" Go through the midst of the city and set a mark (Tau) 
upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for 
all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof." 
The Tau entwined by a serpent was the symbol of 
regeneration and salvation. 

FIG. 20.—ijth century. 

FIG. 21.—I5th century. 

Fig. 20 is the sacred Y of Pythagoras. This denotes 
the branching roads of Vice and Virtue. To every man 
there arrives a time when it is incumbent upon him to 
choose the one or other of these roads. In old woodcuts 

 2O 

NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the Y is to be found with a celestial crown suspended from 
the right arm, and symbols of damnation from the other. 

Figs. 22 to 26 are representatives of an immense class 
of watermark. The hand was, I think, primarily the 

RELIGIOUS EMBLEMS 

21 

FIG. zz,—1577. 

Fio. zj.—15* century. Fio. 14.—15* century. 

Fio. »4A.—1573. 

Fio. 25—1549. 

Fio. z6.—I5th century. 

emblem of labour, of the axiom Laborare est orare ; 
when marked with a heart of loving labour. When as in 
figure 26 the third and fourth fingers are bent downwards, 
it was the sign of Benediction. 

" It behoveth man," says a twelfth century writer, " to 
have a candlestick that he may shine with good works." 

In Fig. 27 we have such a candlestick which " by 
its good example inflameth others." "How far," 
says Shakespeare, " that little candle throws his beams ! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 

The character of the Albigenses was a combination 
of unflagging industry, cold common sense 
and ardent mysticism. They were, as we 
shall see, the greatest practical exponents of the 
art of Allegory that modern civilisation has 
seen. There was not a single dogma that they 
did not spiritualise. To them, God was a 
Spirit to be worshipped only in spirit. They 
attributed to the scriptures a fourfold interpreta- 
tion, the Historic, the Allegoric, the Tropologie, 
and the Anagogie. For the edification of the simple 
minded, the historic face-value was sufficient ; by the more 
spiritual among them the allegoric was valued ; the third 
and fourth stages of interpretation were to be trod by 
the higher and the highest minds alone. Throughout 
Albigensian literature we are brought face to face with 
their adherence to the Paulician dictum " The Letter killeth, 
but the Spirit giveth life." In Figs. 28 to 30 we see symbols 
of this teaching. The scissors or snuffers are reminders 
that the flame of spiritual truth burns brighter when snuffed 
of the letter. I should hesitate to make this assertion except 
by the authority of Durandus, whose words are translated by 
his latest editors as follows : " The snuffers or scissors for 
trimming the lamps are the divine words by which men 
amputate the legal title of the Law, and reveal the shining 
Spirit." 

Durandus was a Provençal bishop (c. 1300). His 
Rationale Divinorum Offictorum^ from which I shall draw 

 22 

NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

constantly hereafter, was the firstl work of an uninspired 
author that was issued from the printing press; evidence 
sufficiently striking of the high estimation in which it was held. 
Durandus is obviously a Latinised form of Durand, a name 
conspicuous in Albigensian literature, and to be seen in water- 

FIG. 28.—1496. 

FIG. 29.—1450. 

FIG. 30.—1476. 

mark Fig. 211 (p. 76). The Rationale is a typical example 
of the Albigensian method not only of interpreting scripture, 
but of fitting every material object, to the minutest detail, 
with spiritual meanings. All things, Durandus tells us, 
be full of divine significations and mysteries, and overflow 
with a celestial sweetness ; if so be that men be diligent in 
the study of them, and know how to draw honey from the 
rock, and oil from the hardest stone. 

1 See note, p. 237. 

CHAPTER III 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

THE Albigensian idea of God (as far as I under 
stand it) was as follows. The Father they 
regarded as All-Wise and All-Good, but not as 
All-powerful ; otherwise He would not have permitted the 
existence of evil. Matter they regarded as the creation 
of some opposing Evil Principle, and the creation of the 
human race as a catastrophe by which immortal souls 
were imprisoned in flesh cages. 

The God of Goodness they regarded as a Trinity, and 
as nothing foul could flow from such a Source, they 
attributed to Him no responsibility for the sorry scheme of 
human affairs, but considered it their duty to live so wholly 
in the spirit, that mundane affairs lost their power to vex. 

Christ they considered to be the Saviour of the world, 
the Redeemer of the souls in prison, and the highest of the 
angels. The Holy Spirit ranked third in their Celestial 
Hierarchy, and it was the joy of the redeemed to dwell for 
ever in the contemplation of His ineffable beauty. 

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was re 
jected as an error contrary to good sense and the laws of 
Nature. The expression "Son of God" was interpreted 
allegorically as meaning the soul of man regenerated by 
the Holy Spirit, and Beloved of God the Father. Many 
of the Albigenses believed Christ to have had no human 

 24 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

existence, but to have been the Personification of the abstract 
qualities of TRUTH. This class doubtless interpreted Marv 
as Mare^ the unfathomable sea of the Spirit. 

The designs here grouped together are emblems of these 
ideas, which, as will be recognised, were strongly reminiscent 
of Gnosticism. 

The serpent in Figs. 3 1 and 3 1 A was, according to the most 
ancient imagery, the emblem of the hidden or unrevealed 

FIG. 31.—1745. 

FIG. 31 A.—(reversed) 1751· 

FIG 31.—i8th century. 

Deity, God the Father. According to ancient philosophy 
the figure Three represents Time—past, present, to come. 
The serpent twisted into the form of a 3 should denote, 
therefore, the eternity of God the Father, the ever-existent 
" I AM." In every age and creed, says Balzac, the number 
Three has represented God ; that is to say, Matter, Force, 

aud Result. The serpent in the form of a circle is another 
illustration of the same idea, the circle being the emblem of 
universality or Omnipresence, and (for the reason that it 
offers no solution of continuity) likewise of Eternity. 

Figs. 31 and 32 are representations of an idea very 
popular in Eastern architecture, and among the Guild of 
Cathedral Builders known as the Comacine Masters. These 
designs of tracery without beginning and without an end 
were known in Lombardy as Solomon's Knots. They 
were a representation of the inscrutability of the Divine 
Being. Surrounded by a circle they would denote the 
Eternal Inscrutability. It will be observed that Fig. 34 is 
traced in the form of a cross, and that Fig. 36 is an in 
genious adaptation of the symbol known as the fylfot 
which has been looped up at the extremities. The early 
Christians understood the fylfot as a symbol of Christ 
the Corner Stone, but its origin is vastly anterior to 
Christianity. 

Fie. 33·—'7'h century. 

FIG. 34.—1134, 

FIG. 35.—1328. 

FIG. 36.—1317. 

Within Fig. 37 and at the head of Fig. 124 (see p. 49) 
will be observed the number 4. By the Ancients the Uni 
verse was regarded as a living arithmetic in its development, 

 26 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and a realised geometry in its repose. They accepted num 
bers as the best representations of the laws of harmony 
that everywhere prevail. The figure 4 was held sacred 
as the emblem of moral justice and Divine 
equity, on account of its forming the perfect 
square, none of the bounding lines of a 
square exceeding the others by a single point in 
length. All the powers and symphonies of 
spiritual and physical nature, it was believed, lay inscribed 
within a perfect square, hence the figure 4 was employed 
to express the ineffable Name of an otherwise unexpressible 
Deity. I include here some examples of watermarked 

FIG. 37.—1585. 

FIG. 38.—1476. 

FIG. 39.—1476. 

FIG. 40.—1489. 

FIG. 41.—1357. FIG. 41—1359. 

scales. The scales typified eternal equilibrium which is the 
necessity of a Universe of Harmony and exact Justice. 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

Fig. 43 is obviously the Lamb of God. 

Fig. 44 is a pelican, the emblem of Self-Sacrifice. It 
was supposed, owing to a red spot at the tip of the bill, that 
the pelican pierced its breast in order to feed its young ones 
with its life blood. Hence Dante refers to the Saviour as 
** nostro Pelicano." 

Fio. 43.—i¡th century. 

FIG. 44.—ijth (?) century. 

FIG. 45—1470. 

FIG. 46.—i6th century. 

Fig. 45 represents the Sun of Righteousness risen with 
healing in His wings, and Fig. 46 the Bright and Morning 
Star. The monogram I H S really stood for the word 
IHSOUS, but the later and more attractive idea that it implied 
(I)ESUS (H)oMiNUM (S)ALVATOR has almost superseded the 
original notion. 

Fig. 48, the fish, was a favourite emblem among the 
Christians in the Catacombs. When it was discovered that 
the letters in the Greek word for a fish were the initials of 
the phrase, " Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour," the 
fish symbol at once sprang into use. 

 28 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

The anchors, as seen in Figs. 49 to 52, are emblems of 
Christ as a Refuge and a very present Help in trouble. 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

/Lo 

FJG. 48.—1314. 

IT 

FIG. 47.—lyth century. 

The letters I C presumably stand for Jesus Christus. 

FIG. 49. 

17th century. 

FIG. 50. 
I5th century. 

FJG. ¡ι. 
15th century. 

FJG. 51. 
15th century. 

Figs. 53 to 59 represent the True Vine. 

FIG. 53.—1440. 

FIG. 54. 
lyth century. 

FIG. 55. 
lyth century. 

In the centre of Fig. $JA will be observed the labarum 
forming the first letters of the word Christos. The cross is 
the Greek letter Chi (χ) and the Ρ the Greek letter R (f}. 

29 

The letters I C, which appear over Figs. 56 and 57, stand 
probably for Jesus Christus. 

(MD 

FIG. 56.—i8th century. 

FIG. 57.—i8th century. 

17th century. 

Fig. 58 shews a dove, the emblem of the Holy Spirit. 
The frequency of this device has led to a 
certain paper being known technically as 
Colombier. 

In Figs. 59, 60, and 61 the Spirit is 
represented as descending with outstretched 
wings. Where, as in Figs. 60 and 61, it is 
upon a heart, sanctified by the mark of the 
cross, the intention is evidently a pictorial 
representation of the prayer, " Cleanse the 
thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of 
Thy Holy Spirit." Further emblems of 
the Holy Spirit will be discussed later. 

The Trinity was symbolised by three circles, "that 
Trinitie and Unitie," to quote an old writer, " which this 

FIG. 57A.—1640. 

FIG. 58. — 1767. 

globous triangle in a mortali immortali figure represents." 
In Fig. 62 the sign is shown surrounded by a flaming halo, 

 30 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and in Fig. 63 surrounded by an olive wreath. The olive 
branch is still universally accepted as the emblem of Peace. 
Fig. 63 was adopted as the Arms of Lombardy, a province 

FIG. 60.—1736· 

FIG. 6i.—i8th century. 

which has always been identified with Albigensianism in 
its various forms. Frequently the three circles were ranged 
on the top of each other. In this case they may, I think, 

FIG. 6z.—1594- 

FIG. 63.—1697. 

be read upwards as representing the Holy Spirit, Jesus 
Christ, and the Father. The symbols within these circles 
vary incessantly. 

Another form in which the Trinity was expressed was 
that of the clover leaf or trefoil ; but the favourite emblem 
was a Fleur de lys. In Fig. 81 it will be observed 
encircled by a blazing halo. On Fig. 82 the initials I S 
stand in all probability for Jesus Salvator. 

The three triangles pointing downwards on to a heart, 
as in Fig. ι, are obviously, I think, also a Trinity emblem. 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 31 

Speaking generally, every emblem representing the 
Trinity served also as a symbol of man's Soul for the reason 
that Man is said to have been made in God's image. In his 
work on Dante, published in Paris in 1854, Eugene Aroux, 
who writes from the orthodox Catholic standpoint, com 
plains that mysticism was none other than the arrogant 
dream which aspires to convert men into gods. In this, 
as in most other respects, Aroux's conclusions are probably 
correct. The mystics undoubtedly believed that Man was 
a potential God. As already stated, they accepted the 
expression "Son of God" as meaning the Soul of man 
regenerated by the Holy Spirit. In Figs. 85 and 86, the 
six-pointed Star, we have a favourite emblem, not only of 
Christ in His Divine and human aspect, but of Man's 
regenerated soul. It is said that "the Souls of the Righteous 
shall shine like Stars," and our English Massinger expresses 
the idea more fully as follows :— 

" As you have 

A Soul moulded from Heaven and do desire 
To have it made a Star there, make the means 
Of your ascent to that Celestial height 
Virtue winged with brave action. They draw near 
The nature and the essence of the Gods 
Who imitate their Goodness." 

It is, I think, obvious how the star came to be accepted 
as a Soul symbol. If we take two equilateral triangles, 

V and A, regarding the first as the Divine Trinity 

stooping downwards, and the second as the little Trinity 
of Man's Soul reaching upward, and if we then gradually 
blend these together until they completely embrace thus 

 32 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

KCT7 

Fio. 64. 

FIG. 65. 

FIG. 67. 

FIG. 68. 

FIG. 70. 

FIG. 71. 
and iSM centuries t 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 33 

FIG. 73. 

FIG. 74. 

FIG. 75. 

Fio. 76- 

FIG. 77. 

FIG. 79. 

17/A ΰ*κ/ 18/Λ centuries. 

 34 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

X£, we see that at the moment of perfect fusion the star 
has become self-formed. 

" OM MANI PADME HUM, The Sunrise comes ! 
The dewdrop slips into the shining Sea." 

FIG. 81.—1677. 

FIG. Si.—IJ90. 

FIG. 83.—I74J. 

FIG. 84.—1777 (?). 

Observe how in Figs. 56 and 57 the designers have 
combined point to point, two hearts in lieu of triangles, 

EMBLEMS OF THE DEITY 

35 

and how in Fig. 88 Francesco Pollen merged into his 
emblem the Risen Sun, the six-rayed Star, and the circle of 
Eternity. 

\ 

FIG. 8j. — 1381. 

FIG. 86.—1403. 

FIG. 87.—1381. 

FRANCESCO 

POLLE R l 

FIG. 88.—17th (?) century. 

 CHAPTER IV 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION AND PREACHING 

IN the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which may be 
justly described as an epoch of religious revolution, the 
headquarters of heresy were in the South of France, 
more especially in the provinces of Languedoc and Provence. 
The flourishing cities of Languedoc, which carried on a 
world-wide trade in soap, felt, jewelry, and paper, attracted 
by their prosperity and freedom large numbers of exiled 
Jews and heretics, who took refuge there and tended to 
augment the prosperity and intelligence of the Provencals. 
In many respects the civilisation of the Provencals was in 
advance of that of their European contemporaries. In this 
district originated the Troubadours, of whom we shall speak 
later ; also that singular religious fraternity known as the 
Bridge Builders, a body that did much by its labours and 
example towards improving the highways of medieval 
Europe. The Provencals were cultured and liberal, 
combining the power to think with the inclination and 
ability to execute. Among them flourished hospitals and 
asylums. The higher classes prided themselves upon their 
courtesy, studying as fine arts banquet giving, dress, and 
deportment. As a school of rationalism and etiquette, 
Provence was the academy of Europe, and as such attracted 
a constant influx of immigrants and travellers. 

The culture, mysticism, and rationalism of these pro- 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 37 

vinces, which were then under the government of Count 
Raymond of Toulouse, attracted the jealousy and suspicion 
of the Church of Rome, which demanded the extirpation of 

the heretics. 

The Catholic clergy were the objects of supreme dislike ; 
so acute was the hatred felt for them that, when charged 
with anything unusually mean or atrocious, a Provençal 
ould reply, " I do such a thing ! Do you take me for a 

w 

priest?" It was only in disguise that the clergy dared 
show themselves in public. 

Hence the Church of Rome regarded the Provencals 
with an unfavourable eye, and in 1209 (under the pretext 
of avenging the murder of a Papal legate who had been 
commissioned as an inquisitor to extirpate heresy) Pope 
Innocent III. launched a crusade against the hapless district. 
For upwards of twenty years the Albigenses maintained a 
heroic resistance against the Papal forces. The period forms a 
tragic record of religious fanaticism, bloodthirsty barbarity, 
the ruthless massacre of whole towns and villages, of 
churches knee deep in the blood of unarmed women and 
children, of spoliation, depravity, cynicism, inhumanity, 
and finally a pitiful silence and desolation. At the sack of 
Beziers 20,000, or as some say 40,000, of its inhabitants 
were put to the sword. On inquiry being put to the Abbot 
of Citeaux as to how the soldiers were to distinguish 
between Catholic and heretic, the memorable reply was 
made : ** Kill them all, God will know His own." 

On the conclusion of "Peace" in 1229 the survivors 
were handed over to the tender zeal of the Dominicans, 
and the Inquisition. The persuasive functions of these 
bodies were such that, as History curtly records, the name 
of the Albigenses from the middle of the thirteenth 

 38 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

century gradually disappears, and "they soon became 
extinct." 

The record of the Waldenses is even more tragic than 
that of their fellow-sufferers. They were anathematised 
in 1184 and again in 1215. In 1194 they were evicted 
from Aragon as being likely to sully the Catholic purity 
of Spain. There is reason to believe that on the occasion 
of this exodus (the forerunner of many others) they brought 
away with them the knowledge of papermaking, an art 
that for many years had flourished among their fellow- 
citizens the Moors. In 1209-1229 the Waldenses became 
involved in the destruction which overtook the Albigenses. 
Even their virtues were urged against them as being likely 
to lure others to their way of thinking. They were 
therefore punished "with a just cruelty without pity." 
To offer hospitality to a Waldensian was a capital offence. 
Gregory IX., by a Papal Bull of 1291, went further, by 
declaring the children of those who gave them asylum 
infamous to the second generation. At any time a Vaudois 
might recant and enter the Romish fold, in which case he 
was pardoned, but his tongue was torn out lest it uttered 
blasphemy in the future. In 1316 we find them being 
burnt at Toulouse. During the years 1336-1346 they 
were "seriously harassed." In 1393 the Inquisition burnt 
150 of them in one day at Grenoble. In 1432 and later 
years we again hear of persecution. In 1475 and 1488 
Innocent VIII. launched nefarious crusades against them. 
Their valleys were ravaged by fire and sword, their pastors 
were burnt, and the poor fugitives smoked to death in 
caves where they had endeavoured to take refuge. Yet, 
says History, " all the terrors of fire and sword and torture 
could not tear them from their faith." 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 39 

In 1545 Francis I. burnt twenty-two of their villages, 
and massacred 4000 persons, as many more being driven 

into exile. 

In 1655 persecution broke out again with such ferocious 
and obscene brutality, that details cannot be given. It was 
on this occasion that Milton wrote :— 

" Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones. 

Forget not : in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled 

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 

The vales redoubled to the hills, aud they 

To heaveu. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 

The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow 
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 

The story of the Cathari is embraced in the preceding 
outline. We are told they were gradually rooted out by 
the Inquisition, and that after the first half of the fourteenth 
century they " disappear from history." 

The facts that I now bring forward seem, how 
ever, to prove that although persecution had the effect 
of scattering the sufferers, they tenaciously clung to their 
cherished tenets and traditions, conforming outwardly to 
the religions of the countries in which they took refuge. 
It is obvious that papermaking being an art in which 
they were proficient, they would employ it as a means 
of livelihood, in the same way as their unfortunate 
Huguenot successors carried their crafts with them after 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I think that the 

 I 

40 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

obscure course of papermaking in Europe marks the track 
of Albigensian exiles, small bands of whom penetrated to 
England, and to the remotest parts of the Continent. The 
custom of watermarking is not found in oriental papers, 
but only in those of Europe. 

It seems to have been a happy thought on the part of 
the papermakers to flash signals of hope and encouragement 
to their fellow-exiles in far distant countries, serving at the 
same time as an incentive to faith and godliness in them 
selves. Quarles' definition of an emblem as " a silent 
parable " is here peculiarly applicable, for if my surmises be 
correct, every ream turned out by these pious papermakers 
contained some five hundred heretical tracts, each of which 
ran its course under the unsuspecting nose of Orthodoxy. 

FIG. 89.—ijth century. 

FIG. 90.—1454. 

FIG. 91 —1320. 

Figs. 89 to 94 are apparently emblems of persecution. 
The editors of Durandus state that the sword represents 
the instrument of martyrdom. The executioner's axe sur 
mounted by the cross evidently has the same signification. 

Fig. 94 represents a tool I do not recognise. Possibly it 
was an instrument of torture. The heart struck through by 
an arrow and a sword evidently typifies suffering. 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 41 

The wing in Fig. 96 seems to have been an emblem of 
the Gospel. According to Durandus, the origin of eagle 
lecterns in churches is the passage, " He came flying upon 

\J 

FIG. 91.—1349 

Fir,. 93.—1354. 

FIG. 94.—1333. 

the wings of the winds." Or the wing may possibly bear 
the interpretation put upon it by Shakespeare, " Ignorance 
is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly 
to Heaven." This beautiful little emblem may, I think, 

FIG. 95—1576· 

FIG. 96.—1473. 

be read either as the Gospel wounded and proscribed by 
the Church of Rome, or knowledge struck down in its 
upward flight by the arrow of Orthodoxy. Similar in 
tenor are the ideas underlying the two keys shown in Figs. 
97 to loo. Milton makes one of gold, the key of Heaven ; 
the other of iron, the key of the prison in which the 

 42 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

wicked teachers are to be bound who " have taken away 
the key of knowledge, yet entered not in themselves." 

" The hungry sheep look up and are not fed 

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace and nothing said." 

FIG. 97.—1463. 

FIG. 98.—I5th century. 

FIG. 99. 
18th century. 

FIG. loo. 
I4th (?) century. 

To the single key Durandus refers thus : " I, William, 
by the alone tender mercy of God, Bishop of the Holy 
Church which is in Mende,1 will knock diligently at the 

1 A city in France. 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 43 

door if so be thatc the key of David ' will open unto me : 
that'the King may bring me to His Treasury, and shew 
unto me the Heavenly pattern." 

Q 

FIG. ιοί.-—ijth century. 

FIG. 102.—1427. 

It will be observed that the hand in Fig. 102 is bounded 
by the trefoil. It evidently signifies the Hand of God. 
The key itself was, I imagine, the Spirit that unlocks the 
Letter. 

The hand (see Figs. 22 to 26) among other significa 
tions denoted Faith, Fealty, Allegiance, and Alliance; it 
was pre-eminently a symbol of faith given or kept. 

The sacred number 4 which occurs so constantly in 
watermarks was regarded by the ancient mystics as a most 
binding and solemn oath. One of the meanings attributed 
to the rose (see Figs. 217 to 226) was secrecy^ whence our 
modern expression sub rosa. This flower was dedicated 
to the God of Silence, and was the emblem of reserve and 
faithfulness. 

In view of the frequent employment of these symbols 
as papermarks, one is led to the conclusion that the scattered 
Albigenses constituted among themselves a form of secret 
society ; indeed, such a conclusion is obvious, as the open 
avowal of their tenets invariably brought down upon them 

 f 

44 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

an avalanche ot tribulation. From Figs. 103, 104, and 105 
we get interesting sidelights on their modus operandi. The 

FIG. 103. 

Fio. 104.—1551. 

FIG. 105 

hedgehog, from its habit of rolling itself into a ball at the 
approach of an enemy, was regarded as the emblem of 
fortifying oneself against danger and of seizing opportunities. 
The bear, according to Valerian's vast Hieroglyphic orum^ 
was considered as the symbol of mores occulti or concealed 
habits, because bears first taught men the advantages of 
dwelling securely in caves. They also hibernated during 
the long night of winter, living upon their own fat, and 
returning to life as soon as circumstances became sufficiently 
favourable. It is indubitable that many thoughtful men 
during the perilous Dark Ages regarded themselves as 
lurkers in solitary caves. The idea is exactly conveyed 
in the title given to an alchemical treatise entitled 
" Zoroaster's Cave, or the Philosophers' Intellectual Echo 
to One Another from their Cells." 

I am convinced that papermarks were but one among 
many means by which the philosophers "echoed to one 
another " and intercommunicated. It is stated by Schmidt 
in his Histoire des Cathares that the Albigenses had secret 
signs of recognition, and that they formed among them 
selves a complete system of Church Government, all the 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 45 

offices of which were secretly but efficiently exercised. This 
spiritual Communion its members regarded as the only true 
and Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit, and it was pro 
pagated by many and extraordinary means. Enthusiastic 
missionaries carried its secrets from province to province, 
and made converts not only by the purity of their lives, but 
by their claims to ability to solve the deepest problems of 
philosophy. This mystic Church, whose so-called members 
claimed to receive daily visitations from their Invisible 
Chief the Holy Spirit, numbered innumerable preachers 
supervised by a hierarchy of twelve disciples and sixty-four 
bishops. By some historians it is said to have been 
governed by a supreme Chief or Pope, but Schmidt re 
marks that whether this was so or not is a problem most 
difficult to solve. The appearance of a Pope in watermark 
(Fig. 106) answers, I think, the question finally in the 
affirmative. The reality of this Heretical 
Church is generally admitted by historians. 
In his History of the Inquisition of the Middle 
Ages, Lea states that the heretics were "visited 
every two years by the travelling pastors or 
barbes^ who came in pairs ; an elder known as 
the reggitore^ and a younger, the coadjutorei 
journeying with some pretence of occupation, »s* century, 
finding in every city the secret band of believers whom 
it was their mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the 
faith. Everywhere they met friends acquainted with 
their secret passwords, and in spite of ecclesiastical 
vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean 
network of heresy disguised under outward conformity." 
The Heretical Church was divided roughly into two 
groups—credentesi the believers, and perfecti^ the perfect 

FIG. 106. 

 46 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

ones. The first condition for the exercise of the ministry 
was moral perfection and absolute purity. The mission of 
theperfecfi was to conduct the crecientes into spiritual safety, 
preparing them for the reception of the Holy Spirit. In 
order to be able to impart the Holy Spirit to others, it was 
deemed essential to acquire it oneself by spotless living. 

No risks deterred the Perfect Ones from their prosely 
tising efforts. It is stated by Schmidt that their zeal was 
incredible, and that they would cross seas and continents in 
the hope to converting one single soul to their tenets. In 
the year 1240 it was estimated that 4000 Albigensian 
Perfect Ones were scouring Europe under various disguises, 
such as troubadours, pedlars, and merchants. ** We lead," 
writes one of them, ** a life hard and wandering. We fly 
from town to town like sheep among wolves. We suffer 
persecution like the Apostles and Martyrs, yet our life is 
holy and austere. It is spent in prayers and abstinence, 
and in works which nothing can interrupt. But these 
things are not difficult, for we are no longer of this world." 

I quote from another Perfect One :— 

** We endure many evils and make a hard penance, but 
we know that the entry into Paradise is difficult, and that 
we must pay for it the price of our flesh and blood." 

This quotation furnishes a complete key to the meaning 
of " Bull's Head " emblems, of which some typical speci 
mens are reproduced herewith. They all represent Per 
ardua ad astra (" Through hardships to the stars "). I do 
not explain each of these marks in detail, but the reader 
may do so for himself with the knowledge that the ox was 
emblematic of Patience and Strength. It was regarded as a 
type of all those who bore the yoke and laboured in silence 
for the good of others. From these virtues arose, or de- 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 47 

FIG. 107. 

FIG. 108. 

FIG. 109. 

FIG. no. 

FIG. uz. 

Fio. 113. FIG. 114. FIG. 115. 
EMBLEMS OF Per ardua ad altra (l5th and 16th centuries). 

 48 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Fio. 116. 

00 

Fio. 118. 

FIG. 117.—1400. 

FIG. 11 ς. 

FIG. 120. 

EMBLEMS or Per ardua ad ostra (l5th and 16th centuries). 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 49 

Fio. in. 

FIG. izz. 

FIG. 123. 

FIG. 114..—1530. 

pended, according to the fancy of the emblem designer, the 
Cross of Salvation, the Crown of Celestial Victory, the 
Tau of Regeneration, the Serpent of healing, the Fleur de 
Lys or Flower of Light, the mystic Rose of Paradise, and 
the Star of Nirvana. 

The Albigenses were very perfect exponents of Patience. 
Sufferance was the badge of all their tribe, and with the 
experiences of Job they must have shared a melancholy 
sympathy. It is recorded by a contemporary as an instance 
of Albigensian knowledge of the Scriptures, that a peasant 
could recite from memory the entire Book of Job. 

Among the Little Flo-wers of St Francis of Assisi 
we find the sentiment, " He that with firm humility and 
patience doth suffer and endure tribulation through his 
burning love for God will soon attain unto high graces and 
virtue, arid will be lord of this world and will have an 

 50 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

earnest of the glorious world to come." In Fig. 125, which 
is classed by Mons. Briquet among other examples of 
watermarked crowns, will be observed the phrase MANET 
ULTIMA CŒLO (" It is awaiting me in the highest Heaven "). 

FIG. 115.—1584. 

FIG. 126.—ijz6. 

FIG. 127.—ijth century. 

Figs. 126 and 127 are swans. The swan "is a perfect 
emblème and pattern to us that our death ought to be cheerful 
and life not so deare unto us as it is." Socrates declared that 
good men ought to imitate swans, who, perceiving by a secret 
instinct what gain there was in death, die singing with 

joy- 
Figs. 128 to 131 are bells, and I cannot do better than 

let Durandus explain them in his own words. " By their 
sound," he says, " the faithful may be mutually cheered on 
towards their reward that the devotion of the Faith may be 
increased in them. Just as the watchmen in a camp rouse 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 51 

one another by trumpets, so do the ministers of the Church 
excite each other by the sound of bells to watch the livelong 

night." 

" Again," he continues, " Bells do signify preachers who 
ought after the likeness of a Bell to exhort the faith- 

Fœ. 128.—1446. 

FIG. 129.—ijth century. 

FIG. 130.—1700. 

FIG. 131.—iSS7. 

ful unto faith. The hardness of the metal signifieth 
fortitude in the mind of the preacher. The clapper or 
iron -which by striking on either side maketh the sound, 
doth denote the tongue of the preacher, the which with the 
adornment of learning doth cause both Testaments to 
resound. The striking of the Bell denoteth that a 
preacher ought first of all to strike at the vices in himself 
for correction, and then advance to blame those of others. 
The link by which the clapper is joined or bound unto the 
bell, is moderation," etc. etc., and so he goes on expounding 
in detail the wood of the frame, the pegs, the iron clamps, 

 52 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the rope, and the action of bell-ringing. The ringer 
when pulling downwards " understandeth the Scripture 
according to the Letter which killeth ; he is drawn upwards 
when he expoundeth the same according to the Spirit." 

I have quoted Durandus at some length, as a specimen 
of the extraordinary manner in which the mystics spiritual 
ised everything material. The same writer makes some 
additional remarks about a second and smaller type of 
bell, which he terms a squilla. To this word his editors 
add a footnote that they conceive that " the sort of a bell 
here meant is a kind of handbell formed out of a hollow 
ball of metal furnished with a slit for the sound, and with 
a loose pellet inside. This answers to the squilla in shape, 
and utters a very shrill sound." 

Evidently Figs. 132 and 133 represent the squilla which, 

FIG. 132. 

FIG. 133. 

according to Durandus, "by its sharp sound signifieth 
Paul preaching acutely." It is worthy of note that in 
some districts the Albigenses were known as " Poblicans," 
which is said to have been a corruption of Paulicians. Their 
fondness for the Paulician doctrine " The Letter killeth " 
curiously associates them with this little squilla of acute 
Paulician preaching. 

While Durandus is discussing the larger sized or 
ordinary bell, he notes that the rope from which it hung 
is composed of three strands, representing the Trinity of 
Scripture, namely, History, Allegory, and Morality. The 

EMBLEMS OF PERSECUTION & PREACHING 53 

reader will observe the little symbol of his Trinity, which 
almost invariably surmounts Bell emblems. 

An older document than the Rationale of Durandus 
Mystical Mirror of the Church, by Hugo de 

s 

Sancto Victor. From this I draw the following interpreta 
tion of Figs. 1 34 and 1 36 : "The cock representeth preachers. 

FIG. 134.—1380. 

FIG. 135.—1380. 

FIG. 136.—i8th century. 

For the cock in the deep watches of the night dividerti the 
hours thereof with his song ; he arouseth the sleepers ; he 
fore-telleth the approach of day, but first he stirreth up 
himself to crow by the striking of his wings. Behold ye 
these things mystically, for not one is there without 
meaning. The sleepers be the children of this world 
lying in sins. The cock is the company of preachers 
which do preach sharply, do stir up the sleepers to cast 
away the works of darkness, crying " Woe to the sleepers ! 
Awake thou that sleepest ! " 

This author proceeds, like Durandus, to the extremest 
limits of detailed interpretation. 

 54 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

In Figs. 137 and 138 I think we have pictures of the 
Perfect Ones preaching. Observe over Fig. 137 the Tau 
sign of him who cries over the abominations of the city. 

FJG. 137.—1570. 

FIG. 139.—1415. 

FIG. 138.—1436. 

FIG. 140.—1542. 

FIG. 141.—1547. 

Fig. 141 is presumably the Angel of the Annunciation 
holding a lily. Fig. 139 is, I surmise, a defective attempt 
at the same subject ; if not, I should interpret it as a Perfect 
One preaching acutely with his right arm, while holding 
in his left hand the white flower of a blameless life. 

CHAPTER V 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

IN their crusade against the abuses of the Church of 
Rome, the Albigenses found ardent auxiliaries among 
their fellow countrymen, the Troubadours. It is 
almost impossible to overestimate the influence exercised by 
these all-powerful minstrels. Wandering from town to town 
and castle to castle, their lyrics swayed the minds of not their 
own countrymen alone, but of all Europe from sovereign to 
peasant. Few things could resist their ridicule, and no 
memories were beyond their power to perpetuate. 

When, in 1209-1226, the Church of Rome devastated 
the Albigensian provinces, the home of the Troubadours 
was demolished, its laws and customs were reversed, and its 
language was proscribed and extinguished. But this 
transmutation of a beautiful and peaceful country into a 
wild desert sown with unburied corpses, recoiled disastrously 
upon the perpetrators of the wrong. The expatriated 
Troubadours found for themselves asylums in all parts of 
Europe, where they kept alive the story of Romish 
barbarity, and added perpetual fuel to the smouldering fires 
of heresy. 

Not only were Troubadours the constant attendants 
on learned princes, but they were the confidantes and 
companions of learned men. Their profession embraced 
the callings of poet, musician, chronicler, litterateur^ and 

 56 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

theologian. It is remarkable to find what a large number 
of princes and representatives of noble families forsook 
their stations and enrolled themselves in the Troubadour 
ranks. Among them occur such names as Richard Cœur 
de Lion, Alphonse II. of Aragon, and the Counts of 
Poitou, Provence, and Toulouse. The courtly and poetic 
Troubadours prepared the youth of both sexes for society, 
and drew up rules for their guidance. We find them giving 
advice such as the following :—" Shun the companionship 
of fools, impertinents, or meddlers, lest you pass for the 
same. Never indulge in buffoonery, scandals, deceit, or 
falsehood. Be frank, generous, and brave; be obliging 
and kind; study neatness in your dress, and let elegance 
of fashion make up for plainness of material. Never allow 
a seam to remain ripped and gaping; it is worse than a 
rent: the first shows ill-breeding, the last only poverty, 
which is by far the lesser evil of the two. There is no 
great merit in dressing well if you have the means: but 
a display of neatness and taste on a small income is a sure 
token of superiority of spirit," etc. etc. 

Referring to the refining influence of the Troubadours, 
J. F. Rowbotham writes: "Before the rise of the 
troubadours, and the humanizing effect of their songs, and 
the contagious influence of their refined pleasures, these 
same castles which gave so ready a welcome to them and 
their courtly train, were often the morose homes of rapine 
and semi-barbarism. To suppress the excesses of in 
dividuals and to effect a change in the general character of 
an era, the only effectual means is the slow creation of a 
public opinion favourable to the new ideas. It should 
seem that nothing is so conducive towards influencing 
public opinion as the existence of an art such as that of the 

ROM AUNT EMBLEMS 

57 

troubadours, which could infuse itself at every turn into the 
most unguarded moments of private life, and which was 
devoted to the encouragement of blitheness and gaiety. It 
was carried on by those who professed it, not in any spirit 
of self-seeking, but with the most chivalrous and ideal aims. 
And when the noblest and wealthiest men in the land go 
so far that they can consecrate their talents and their 
possessions to the pursuit of a high ideal, we need not be 
surprised if the rudeness and ferocity of their neighbours 
and friends is mitigated and subdued, even if it be not 
totally extinguished." 

Rowbotham, commenting upon their " unfortunate 
attitude towards the Church," i.e. the intellectual contempt 
which they displayed towards the Papacy, observes : " We 
must bear in mind in studying the history of the trouba 
dours that this spirit, which was so strongly pronounced in 
the first of their race, was in a manner common more or 
less to all. Whether it were a secret unbelief or a spirit of 
social rebellion engendered by luxury and looseness of life, 
certain it is that the troubadours throughout their history 
will generally be found to constitute the anti-clerical 
party." 

Aroux is emphatic in his assertion that the Troubadoursl 

1 Under the term " Troubadour " I include the kindred order of Jesters. 
" As to the Jesters," says Aroux—" properly so named Jesters of song, of sayings, of 
romance, as they were called—they must be distinguished from the mimic-jesters, 
that is to say from the mountebanks and buffoons. The clerical jesters were, as has 
already been said, evangelical ministers, still subject to the preliminary discipline of 
the priesthood. Holding the rank of deacons in the sectarian church, they were 
with regard to the pastors to whom they were attached in a position analogous to 
that of squires to knights, and it is under this title that they figure in the romances. 
If distinguished Troubadours are spoken of, and among others Giraud de Borneil, 
as always accompanied by two jesters, it is unquestionable that these Troubadours 
were Albigensian Bishops, whose dignity and functions required the assistance of 

 58 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

were Albigensian heretics, and that it was under the 
disguise of Jongleurs' hoods that the Albigensian pastors 
visited their scattered flocks, and insinuated their proscribed 
doctrines. 

The sentiments of the Troubadours towards the official 
custodians of Christianity may be judged from the following 
passage :—" Rome that sink of corruption ; I know that 
I shall be blamed for speaking against it, but I cannot hold 
my peace. It does not amaze me that the whole world is 
enveloped in sin, for I know how carefully, how earnestly, 
how incessantly, how widely you have sown the seeds of 
war and corruption. Blinded as you are, you shear your 
flock even to the skin! With the Holy Spirit to aid I 
will stop your mouth. Rome more perfidious than all the 
Greeks, blind leader of the blind ! Disregarding the rules 
laid down by Heaven, you sell absolution for money, you 
load your shoulders with a burden that will sink you down 
to the pit. Your principles are abominable, your habits 
are treacherous. God confound you Rome ! " And so 
the poet goes on, mingling his accusations with fearful 
imprecations, and comforting himself with the conviction 
that the power of Rome was declining, and its reign nearly 
at an end. 

" It appears reasonable," says the cautious Heckethorn, 

two deacons." Again, says Aroux: " Nothing was more common in the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries in the countries of the Provencal tongue to see knights, 
castellans, canons, clerics become Troubadours or simple Jesters." 

" The Jongleurs," says J. F. Rowbotham, " acted, if we may so express it, 
the same part which is played by publishers at the present day. The expression is 
not ours, but Petrarch's, who, in alluding to the functions of the jongleur in one of 
his Letters to Boccaccio, explicitly introduces this comparison. He deduces their 
similarity to publishers, and compares the parallel condition of a work when it had 
been recited by a jongleur to admiring crowds and when it had been issued in print 
or manuscript by a publisher and sold to admiring purchasers." 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

59 

«to consider the Troubadours as the originators of that 
vast conspiracy directed against the Church of Rome ; the 
champions of a revolt which had not for its guide and 
object material interests and vulgar ambitions, but a religion 
and a polity of Love." 

The evidence from watermarks confirms the presump 
tion that the Troubadours did indeed form a link in that 

FIG. 141.—1681. 

FIG. 143—1683. 

FIG. 144.—1655. 

long chain of rational mysticism which the Papacy from its 
earliest days made such frantic but ineffectual efforts to break. 

 6o NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

There were four degrees of Troubadours, but the 
Romaunt of the Rose divides them into four and three, 
producing the mystic number seven. Observe at the bases 
of Figs. 142, 143, and 144 this figure of four and three. 
Observe too, how every watermarked figure of a Troubadour 
is distinguished by a kind of pigtail in the form of a cross, 
doubtless the badge of his degree. The different styles of 
Troubadour literature are classified by some writers into 
seven divisions : the Gallant, the Historical, the Didactic, the 
Satirical, the Theological, the Mystical, and the Hermetic. 
Whether these corresponded to the seven grades or no, I 
cannot tell, but the supposition seems probable. 

The Troubadours were conspicuous as Pilgrims of 
Love, Fidèles d"1 Amour ^ and Knights Errant in the service 
of a mysterious Lady, whom they exalt under various 
names, such as Star, Flower, Light, Rose, and Flower of 
Flowers. This service of Love was described as an ** art " 
and a "science," their "gai savoir" their "gat science? 
and there is no doubt whatever that under a well-recognised 
erotic jargon matters and ideas of great moment were com 
municated to the scattered ßdeles. As was pointed out 
seventy years ago by Gabriele Rossetti, many little love 
poems which we are in the habit of regarding to-day as 
amatory trifles are in reality works of a recondite character, 
which enshrine doctrines traditionally handed down from 
past ages. The Troubadours made very little effort to 
dissemble the patent fact. " Thou can'st go," says one of 
them, addressing his own love poem, ** whither thou wilt : 
I have dressed thee so well that thou will be understood 
by those endowed with intelligence : of others thou need'st 
not be concerned." Again we find them deprecating the 
necessity for their obscure mannerisms. " Let none blame 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

61 

me" says Gavaudin, "for selecting a cloudy style of 
writing, or at least, let them reserve their censure until 
they are capable of sifting the wheat that lies therein from 

the chaff." _ . 

Figs. 145 and 146 are representations of the mystic Lady 
who was so persistently besought to cast down the Roman 

FIG. I4S·—i 

FIG. 146,—1584. 

She-Wolf, and to crush the Pontifical serpent. The in 
terpretation placed upon this symbol seems to have varied 
considerably in detail, but very little in essence. Dante, 
the Herald of the Renaissance, and, according to Aroux, 
a great fountain of Heresy and a leader of the Albigensian 
Church, writes : " I say and affirm that the lady of whom 
I was enamoured after my first love was the most beautiful 
and most pure daughter of the Emperor of the Universe 
to whom Pythagoras gave the name Philosophy." 

In the same strain wrote Giordano Bruno: "I am 
displeased with the bulk of mankind; I hate the vulgar 
rout ; I despise the authority of the multitude, and am 
enamoured with one particular Lady. 'Tis for her that I am 
free in servitude, content in pain, rich in necessity and alive in 

 62 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

death. . . . Hence it is even for my passion for this beauty 
that, as being weary, I draw not back my feet from the 
difficult road, nor, as being lazy, hang down my hands 
from the work that is before me : I turn not my shoulders 
as grown desperate, to the enemy that contends with me, 
nor, as dazzled divert my eyes from the divine object. . . . 
'Tis for the love of True Wisdom and by the studious 
admiration for this Mistress that I fatigue, that I disquiet, 
that I torment myself." 

The moon upon her forehead identifies our lady in 
papermark as Diana, the Moon Goddess, worshipped among 
the Greeks as Artemis the pure and spotless one. The 
mediaeval cult of the Virgin SOPHIA passed through many 
remarkable phases. It is curious to find among some 
thinkers the idea that one of the Persons of the Trinity 
was a Woman. In watermarks of a later period we find 
the allegorical Virgin has been placed in an oval, doubtless 
in allusion to the so-called Mundane Egg of the philo 
sophers. The Ephesian Temple of Diana was, I am told, 
constructed in the form of an oval, and the frequent use 
of the Egg as a symbol leads one to the suspicion that the 
mediaeval philosophers knew something about Evolution. 
" Our reading shews," says Rutherford, " that much more 
was known to the few 600 or 700 years ago, than modern 
savants are inclined to think. Strange and startling 
glimpses of this knowledge flicker over the pages of the 
poets and romancists of the Middle Ages." 

In addition to their function as Pilgrims of Love, the 
Troubadours were the Fathers and exponents of the mystic 
Chivalry which flourished during the dark ages, and was 
employed as an effective engine against the abuses of 
Feudalism and religious despotism. Troubadours were in 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 63 

effect the shuttles by which was woven over the face of 
Europe the marvellous fabric of Romantic Mysticism, 
comprising the Romances of the Round Table^ King 
Charlemagne and his Peers^ the Legends of the St. 
Grail and the Romaunt of the Rose. These vast cycles 
of mystic literature, written and declaimed by the 
Troubadours, spread like wildfire over Europe, and were 
translated into many languages. They served as heretical 
Scriptures, from which were drawn lessons of encouragement 
and morality. It is curious to note that the Round Table 
of King Arthur numbered Twelve Knights, that in the 
cycle of Charlemagne we encounter the Twelve peers of 
France, that Peter Waldo, from whom the Waldenses took 
their name, launched his crusade by means of "12 Poor 
Men of Lyons"—facts all pointing significantly to the 
Twelve Disciples of Jesus Christ and the Twelve Disciples 
of the Hierarchy of the Albigensian Church. The oldest 
and best of the Charlemagne Romances is the Song of 
Roland^ the power and dignity of which modern French 
scholars vie with one another in extolling. Roland was a 
pseudo-historical hero, whose exploits formed an exhaustless 
theme of interest. The story is obviously an allegory. 
Heckethorn states that the powerful voice of the furious 
Roland, which made breaches in the granite rocks of the 
mountains, was a representation of the Albigensian Heresy, 
which had found its way into Spain, thus anticipating the 
saying of Louis XIV., "There are no longer any Pyrenees." 
Aroux is of this same opinion, and he adds the important 
information that the great Horn upon which Roland 
waked the echoes was regarded as the symbol of Albigensian 
preaching. 

Figs. 147 to 153 represent the Horn of Roland, and in 

 64 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

\ 

FIG. 147.—1370. 

FIG. «48.—1378. 

FIG. 149.—I43S. 

FIG. ijo.—1488. 

FIG. iji.—I7th century. 

FIG. 152.— 

FIG. 153.—i8th century. 

FIG. 154.—1586 and 1650. 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 65 

Fig- !54 we have a portrait of the Hero himself, "and 
straightway has he raised the horn to his mouth. Firmly 
has he grasped it and sounded it with vigour. Lofty are 
the hills and very loud the echo, and the sound can be 
heard full fifteen leagues away. And the Emperor Charles 
has heard it and all his host of vassals ; and the King 
spake: ' our men are giving battle.' But Ganelon said, ' Had 
another man said this it had seemed a fearful falsehood.' 
With pain and great endeavour has Roland sounded his 
horn, and the bright blood is streaming from his mouth, 
and both his temples has he broken in the endeavour. 
But exceedingly great and loud is the noise, and Charles 
has heard it as he passed across the border ; and N aimes 
the Duke has heard it, and now the Frenchmen listen." 

We have already seen that the Bell was regarded as a 
symbol of preaching. Exceedingly significant is the fact 
that the great bell which had swung for centuries in the 
belfry of the free city of Ghent was known as " Roland." 
This great bell was the special object of the Burghers' 
affection. "It seemed," says Motley, "as if it were a 
living historical personage endowed with the human 
powers and passions which it had so long directed and 
inflamed." 

On the subjection of Ghent the great bell " Roland " was 
condemned and sentenced to immediate removal ! Its iron 
tongue was said to have been capable of bringing 80,000 
fighting men to the city banner. 

But the Song of Roland is thrown into comparative 
obscurity by the multitudinous legends of the St Grail. 
The general development of the stories which cluster round 
this precious Talisman may be summed up as the gradual 
transformation of Oriental and Celtic myths into a legend 

 66 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

saturated with Christian mysticism. Mr Alfred Nutt, who 
is perhaps our greatest authority upon Folk-lore, observes 
that the Grail Romances are " disconcertingly unorthodox," 
claiming an origin so illustrious that " if seriously 
maintained" they would have been most unwelcome to 
the chief Ecclesiastical authority of Christendom. He 
points out that they set up a kind of uncanonical Church, 
claiming to excel the official Church of Christendom. " Is 
it," he asks, " too rash a conjecture that the Grail romances 
reveal in part early attempts to claim for the knightly 
priesthood a position and sanction equal if not superior to 
those of the regular priesthood ? " 

The evidence of papermarks appears to prove that 
Mr Nutt's conjecture is well founded, and that the Grail 
Romances (amounting, it is said, to a bulk equal to that 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] were nothing less than the 
Scriptures of the Albigensian Church. 

I Just as before the elimination of the uncanonical writers 
the world possessed innumerable Gospels relating to Jesus 
Christ, so do we find multitudinous versions of the Gospel 
of the St Grail. The Legend was regarded with the 
highest reverence ; indeed, its authorship was confidently 
ascribed to Jesus Christ. "All these wonders," says 
Helinandus, " are true, as Christ Himself wrote the Book 
of the Holy Grail and save it naught else but the Lord's 
Prayer and the judgment on the woman taken in adultery." 
The precise meaning of the Saint Grail, or Holy Chalice, is 
as obscure and indefinable as that of the Philosopher's Stone, 
but a strong and unexpected beam of light is cast upon the 
subject by papermarks, which, as will be seen, illustrate 
multitudinous phases of the Legend. 

In pre-Christian times, the St Grail appears as a 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

67 

Talisman of increase and plenty. Taliesin ben Beirdd, the 
famous poet, says : " This vessel inspires poetic genius, gives 
wisdom, discovers the knowledge of futurity, the mysteries 
of the world, the whole treasure of human sciences." The 
Rev. S. Baring-Gould points out that this vessel of the 
liquor of wisdom held a most prominent place in British 
mythology. Taliesin, in the description of his initiation into I 
the mysteries of the vase, cries out, " I have lost my speech ! " 
because on all who had been admitted to the privileges of ί 
full membership, secrecy was imposed. This initiation was 
regarded as a new birth, and those who had once become 
members were regarded as elect, regenerate, separate from 
the rest of mankind, who lay in darkness and ignorance. 

The salient features of the Legend, as reconstructed by 
the Troubadours on a Christian basis, are as follows :— 

The St Grail was the cup used by Christ at the Last 
Supper. It was employed by Joseph of Arimathea to catch 
the blood that flowed from the wounded side of the 
crucified Saviour. Subsequently it was taken to Heaven 
until such a time as a line of heroes could be found on 
Earth worthy to be entrusted with its guardianship. The 
Knights of the Grail fulfilling the requisite conditions, the 
sacred vessel, with the name Graal blazoned upon it, was 
left behind on Earth by a band of spirits as they winged 
their way to their celestial abode. The Holy Chalice was 
delivered to "Titurel, " at whose birth an angel had 
announced that God had chosen him to be a Defender of 
the Faith. 

Bergmann, in his essay on the St Grail, observes that 
it was the symbol of grace and salvation. It was : but the 
testimony from papermarks proves further that it was held 
sacred as a symbol of the celestial influence personified 

 68 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

by the term Holy Spirit—the very essence of the Mystic 
Universal Church. 

The Legend tells that when the precious Talisman was 
entrusted to Earth, it was deposited in a lordly castle built 
for its reception. Bergmann notes that its guardians, the 
Templars, although Christians, rather resemble an associa 
tion formed without the pale of the Church than a 
Catholic community. 

Some writers situate the Castle-Temple on a mountain 
in the midst of a thick wood, " symbolic," says Bergmann, 
"of moral elevation and sanctity." Figs. 155 to 158 are re 
presentations of this castle. At the base of Fig. 155 note the 
sacred " 4," and on the summit observe three semi-circles. 
These three objects, used in varying forms, see Figs. 159 
to 164 (they were, I believe, the Arms of Bohemia), 
denoted the three Mounts, Sinai, Moriah, and Calvary. 
From Sinai, the Law was given; on Moriah, Solomon 
built his Temple ; and on Calvary, Christ suffered. They 
were regarded as the emblem of moral elevation and high 
thinking, a representation of the Silver Mountains whence 
spring the Nectar fountains. Observe that from Figs. 158 
and 159 arise the same happy issues as those depicted 
emanating from the Bull's Head on p. 48, Fig. 116. 
The object above Fig. 157 is evidently a variant of the 
Tau. 

The warfare waged by the Grail Knights against the 
enemies of the Holy Vase was regarded as a symbol of the 
perpetual struggle which every Christian ought to maintain 
against his own evil propensities. We find everywhere as 
supreme an insistence upon purity as a necessity among 
Grail Knights as among Albigensian perfecti and pastors. 
A single unclean thought was reputed sufficient to deprive 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

FIG. 156.—1459. 

FIG. 157.—1440. 

Fro. 158—1473. 

Fio. 16o. 
15th century. 

r\ 

V, 

J) 

FIG. 159. 
1 5th century. 

Fio. 161.— 

1471. 

FIG. 161. 
ijth century. 

FIG. 163. 
I5th century. 

FIG. 164. 
1438. 

 Il 

70 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the Knight of the Grail of the joys and privileges attached 
to its service. 

In Figs. 165 to 213 we have a series of designs em 
bodying the manifold phases of the Grail cult. Many of 
these emblems it is beyond my ability to decipher, but others 
are sufficiently simple to understand. 

In Figs. 165 and 166 the Dove of the Holy Spirit is 
resting on the sacred vessel, and the body of the Grail is 
decorated with seven pearls, clearly an emblem of the words : 

" Thou the anointing Spirit art 
Who dost Thy sevenfold gifts impart." 

According to the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschen 
bach, the Grail yielded all manner of food and drink, its 
powers being sustained by a Dove which every Good 
Friday laid a Host upon it. Another version of the 
allegory relates that Joseph, having been miraculously de 
livered from prison, was exiled in company with the sister 
of Veronica, who had with her a Vera Icony and passed into 
Britain, the promised Land, with a large following. When 
short of food, Joseph prayed for the Grail ; it was sent, and 
the company had bread and wine and meat in plenty. 

In cases where we find the Grail watermarks piled high 
with grapes, it is obvious they represent the celestial food, 
typified by the giant bunch of grapes, which Caleb and 
Joshua brought away from the land of Canaan as a sign 
of the milk and honey reported to be overflowing there. 

In Figs. 208 to 213 the symbols rise to supremely beauti 
ful heights. Observe that these complicated marks form 
the outlines of sacramental cups. The upper portions, 
consisting of Fleurs de Lys, Roses, Stars, and pearls of 
Heavenly Wisdom, symbolise the Celestial Regions. From 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

FIG. 165.—1599· 

FIG. 166.—1600. 

FIG. 167. 

FIG. 168. 

FIG. 169. 
I5th century. 

Fie. 170. 
15th century. 

FIG. 171. 

I5th century. 

FIG. 173. 
17th century. 

FIG. 174. 
17th century. 

FIG. 175. 
17th century. 

FIG. 176. 
I7th century. 

 72 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Fio. 177. 

1628. 

FIG. 178. 
1628. 

FIG. 179. 
1628. 

FIG. 180 
1628. 

FIG. 181. 
17th century. 

FIG. 182. 
I7th century. 

FIG. 183. 
17th century. 

FIG. 184. 
17th century. 

FIG. 185. 
χ7th century. 

FIG. 186. 
I7th century. 

FIG. 187. 
17th century. 

Fra. 188. 
lyth century. 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

73 

FIG. 189.—1344· 

FIG. 190.—1314. 

FIG. 191.—1605. 

Fio. 192.—1605. 

FIG. 193.—1605. 

FIG. 194.—1605. 

 74 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

FIG. 195.—1605. 

FIG. 196.—1605. 

FIG. 197.—1605. 

FIG. 198.—1605. 

Fio. 199.—1605. 

FIG. îoo.—1605. 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

75 

FIG. ÎOI.—1605. FIG. ιοί,—1605. FIG. 103.—1605. FIG. 204.—1605. 

FIG. 205. 
17th century. 

FIG. îo6. 
17th century. 

FIG. 207. 
I7th century. 

FIG. îo8.—i7th century. 

FIG. 209.—17th century. 

 ;6 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

77 

TOT) 

FIG. ilo.—lyth century. 

FIG. in.—i7th century. 

(ΕΜ2ΖΕΖΠ3 

FIG. in.—17th century. 

these descends and ascends a chain of links ; each link an 
S. This collar of SS, which is referred to in Shakespeare's 
Henry VIIL^ denotes the Holy Spirit: the links reading 
either in groups of three, when they denote the exclamation 
S(ancfus) S(anctus) S(anctus) ! or in groups of two, when 
they imply S(anctus) S(piritus}.1 TVi*» Mairie*. rv/~.cc ^f 

The Maltese Cross of 

FIG. 113.—i7th century. 

FIG. 214.—I7th century. 

eight points was the symbol of the Eight Beatitudes. 
Within the enclosure of the Spiritual chain will be observed 
two fishes and five 2 circles, probably a representation of the 
miraculous five loaves and two small fishes with which 
Christ fed the multitude. It will be observed that in some 
cases a solitary fish is depicted. The explanation is to be 
found in the Romance of the Grand St Grail, one of the 
longest and latest in the cycle. Alain's fishing is described, 
and how having caught a fish that suffices to feed all the 
company, he is called the Rich Fisher, a title borne after 
him by all the Grail keepers. 

Beneath Figs. 208 and 209 may be seen the phrase, 
"May God protect it," the " it," being without doubt the 
Spiritual Church of the Grail. 

On reviewing the various attributes of the St Grail, its 
qualities of producing food to the taste of every partaker, 
and its abilities to cause heretofore desert lands to blossom 

1 In Fig. 214 the designer has formed the chain into a bunch of grapes. 

2 The exceptional appearance of six loaves, I am unable at present to explain. 

 in 

78 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

into fruit and beauty, it is abundantly clear that we are face 
to face with an emblem of the Spirit which giveth life, in 
contradistinction to the Letter which killeth. Hence it is 
only a step further to recognise the employment of the 
sacred light-containing cup as an Emblem of MAN himself, 
the so-called Temple of the Holy Spirit. It will be re 
membered that the members of the Albigensian Church 
claimed to receive daily visitations from their Great In 
visible Chief, the Holy Spirit. In Figs. 60 and 61 we saw 
this idea illustrated by the descent of the Dove with out 
stretched wings upon the human heart. The double SS 
when employed as handles to the sacramental vessels of the 
Church, and to be seen so frequently in these Grail paper- 
marks, denoted the presence of the Sanctus Spiritus^ or 
Pure Wisdom. 

Passing from the Legends of the Grail to the famous 
Romaunt of the Rose, we again find ourselves face to face 
with an heretical allegory. Aroux states that not only was 
this work, which had an immense vogue, a scarcely veiled 
satire against the Court of Rome, but it was the very 
apotheosis of the sectarian philosophy. The tale relates 
how a " Lover " arrives at a delicious garden enclosured by 
a lofty wall. Within this orchard of Love are rare and 
lovely plants, without are all the vices. In the centre of 
the mystic garden grew a Rose (see p. 133). The celestial 
music of the birds within this Paradise can only be likened 
to a siren's song. As Chaucer puts it :— 

" It semede a place espirituel. 
For never yitt sich melodye 
Was herd of man." 

The music was :— 

"... wonder lyk to be 
Song of mermaydens of the see 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

79 

That for her syngyng is so clere. 
Though we mermaydens clepe hem here 
In English as in oure usaunce 
Men clepe hem sereyns in Fraunce." 

In Figs. 215 and 216 we see a symbol of this heavenly 
music. Observe the significant Cross and the Rose. It is 
stated in Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopœdia that 
the Rose was "a symbol of immortality. The rose was 

FIG. 215.—1433. 

FIG. ϊΐβ.—1489. 

afterwards applied to signify Christ, and a rose resting on a 
cross typified the Soter on the cross or the secret of 
immortality." There is a silver Rose in the Paradise 
figured by the Brahmans. In the centre of the silver Rose 
the Deity is said to have had His permanent residence. 
Similarly Dante figures the supreme central Heaven as an 
effulgent Rose and Flower of Light, "brighter than a 
million suns, immaculate, inaccessible, vast, fiery with 
magnificence and surrounding God as if with a million 
veils." 

As translated by Gary, Dante's words are :— 

" How wide the leaves, 
Extended to their utmost, of this rose, 
Whose lowest step embosoms such a space 
Of ample radiance ! Yet, nor amplitude 
Nor height impeded, but my view with ease 

 8o NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Took in the full dimensions of that joy. 
Near or remote, what there avails, where God 
Immediate rules, and Nature, awed, suspends 
Her sway ? Into the yellow of the rose 
Perennial, which, in bright expansiveness, 
Lays forth its gradual blooming, redolent 
Of praises to the never-wintering sun, 
As one, who fain would speak yet holds his peace, 
Beatrice led me; and, "Behold," she said, 
This fair assemblage ; stoles of snowy white, 
How numberless. The city, where we dwell, 
Behold how vast ; and these our seats so throng'd, 
Few now are wanting here. 

······ 

In fashion, as a snow white rose, lay then 
Before my view the saintly multitude." 

In Figs. 224 and 225 it will be observed that in the 
centre of the Rose perennial are emblems of the Divine. 

ROMAUNT EMBLEMS 

81 

Fio. 117. 
17th century. 

FIG. 218. 
17th century. 

FIG. 219. 
17th century. 

FIG. z 20. 
17th century. 

UVKPf 

Fio. I2I. 

17th century. 

FIG. 2ZJ. 
ι7th century. 

Fio. »14.—i4th century. 

Fio. Ζί.__ 

Fio. 226.—1436. 

 CHAPTER VI 

"THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

NOT only were the Albigenses exponents of pure Christianity, 
but they were devoted apostles of Education. They would 
have endorsed Meredith's dictum that Culture is half-way 
to Heaven. Among their earliest documents (circa 11 οο) 
are an anthology of philosophic sentences entitled Li Parlar 
de li Philosophes et Doctoro, and a catechism of instruction 
for children. They maintained night schools where in 
secrecy was taught the art of reading. Berard comments 
upon what he terms a fact unique in the history of the 
Middle Ages, namely that every Vaudois possessed a rudi 
mentary education. The entire New and many portions of 
the Old Testament were committed to memory. The first 
printed French Bible was that issued by the Vaudois in 
I532(-?)> and it was they who first translated from Latin into 
the vernacular the Lives of the Saints. In their combat 
against clerical ignorance and intolerance, and as producers 
and exponents of belles lettres^ the Troubadours were 
among the earliest assertors of Intellect. Provence was, 
in effect, the cradle of the Renaissance, a land of intel 
lectual light whose rays spread over the whole of Europe. 
" If these heretics," laments Berard, " had only been able to 
continue their active propaganda ; if they had not fallen in 
shoals under the executioner's axe, what an incalculable gain 
to civilisation ! " But though crushed and scattered, the 

"THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 83 

civilisation of Provence continued to exist for subsequent 
centuries, stealthily yet surely imposing its manners on its 
neighbours. 

Fig. 227 represents what is commonly known as a 
Catherine Wheel, by the teeth of which St Catherine 
nearly suffered martyrdom (A.D. 309). The legend runs 
that fifty pagan philosophers were let loose upon this 
suffering virgin, with the intent to pervert her from 
Christianity. Her winning eloquence, however, was so 
effective that the philosophers themselves were the con 
verts; whereupon, says the legend, St Catherine became 
" the patroness of philosophers and learned schools." 

Fio. 

Fio. 228. 
I5th century. 

FIG. 229. 
J6th century. 

FIG. 231. 
IJth century. 

The emblems on p. 61 prove that papermakers were 
lovers of the Virgin SOPHIA, and these wheel emblems of 
M Catherine identify their designers as philosophers and 
a learned school." 

 84 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

In Fig. 230 the acorns represent slow growing strength. 
The Star flower presumably symbolised that blossoming 
fertility which was associated with the Sangraal. 

The mediaeval mystics regarded as inseparable la bonté 
et la sagesse: they drew no line between Science and 
Religion, and in Fig. 229 we have a symbol of this 
combination of goodness and wisdom. The conjunction 
of goodness and beauty was symbolised by a jewelled ring, 
as shown in Figs. 233 and 234. Green reproduces this 

FIG. z33.—1479. 

He 

FIG. «35.—15th century. FlQ· Z36· 

ring emblem from Corrozet's Hecatomgraphie (1540) with 
the motto, "Beauty the companion of goodness." 
thus translates the verse which accompanies it :— 

" As for the precious stone, 

The ring of gold is coined, 
So beauty in its grace 

Should be to goodness joined." 

"THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 85 

By the Old Masters, St. Catherine is oftentimes depicted 
with a wheel in the second form of Fig. 235. This 
particular mark is of singular interest, being that used by 
the first recorded English papermaker, John Tate of 
Hertford. Many Albigenses found an asylum in this 
country, and with them they evidently brought—as did 
their Huguenot successors of a later century—the knowledge 
and practice of papermaking. English History knew them 
under the name of Lollards, to whose scholarly and prolific 
leader, John Wycliffe, we are indebted for the first English 
translation of the Bible. 

As we have seen, many of the Albigensian thinkers 
veiled their philosophic notions in the garments of allegory 
and romance. Just as they spiritualised chivalry, so 
they infused their mystic teaching into that other great 
feature of mediaeval Europe, Alchemy. There were, 
of course, great chemists in the Middle Ages, but the 
majority of printed treatises on Alchemy are palpably 
religious essays in disguise. Title-pages such as The New 
Pearl of Great Price, Λ Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby, 
An Easy Introduction to the Philosopher's Gold, and so 
forth, are alone sufficient to arouse this suspicion ; but the 
matter is placed beyond doubt by the assertions of the 
Alchemists themselves. The allegorical character of Alchemy 
is reiterated with pathetic insistence. " Do not blindly be 
lieve these and similar assertions of Basilius," his annotator 
warns us, " but keep your eyes wide open." " Whatever 
we read," says Cornelius Agrippa, "about the irresistible 
powers of the Magic Art, or the wonderful sights of the 
astrologers, will be found to be fables and lies as soon as 
we take those things in their external and literal meaning. 
Their external forms cover internal truths, and he who 

 ! t 

86 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

desires to see those truths must be in possession of the 
Divine light of Reason, which is in possession of very few." 

" Let me entreat you," says Combachius in his Epistle 
to the Reader, "to take notice that when you find any 
mention made of heaven, earth, soul, spirits, or our heaven, 
etc., these are not meant the celestial heaven or natural 
earth, but terms used by the philosophers to obscure their 
sayings from the wicked." 

" I would have the courteous reader be here admonished," 
says Sendivogius, " that he understand my writings, not 
so much from the outside of my words as from the 
possibility of nature; lest afterwards he bewail his time, 
pains, and cost all spent in vain." 

" The philosophers," one writer tells us, " ever discourse 
in parables and figures." " Let the studious reader," says 
another, ** have a care of the manifold significance of 
words, for by deceitful windings and doubtful, yea, 
contrary speeches (as it would seem), philosophers unfold 
their mysteries with a desire of concealing and hiding the 
truth from the unworthy." 

Yet notwithstanding these emphatic warnings, the 
Alchemists have been dismissed by History as charlatans 
and impostors, as either dupes or knaves, and they stand 
, condemned for the " mystical trash " that they are 
alleged to have let loose upon Europe. Hallam is con 
spicuous in his denunciation of ** that unworthy innovator " 
Paracelsus. He tells us that Agrippa had drunk deep at 
"the turbid streams of Cabalistic philosophy," that his 
system was the " mere creed of magical imposture," and 
that in general influence the Alchemistical theories were 
more pernicious than the technical pedantry of the Schools. 

It must be admitted that the mannerisms of Alchemy 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

87 

are exasperating to a degree. We are informed by one 
writer that the Sages "set pen to paper for the express 
purpose of concealing their meaning. The sense of a whole 
passage is often hopelessly obscured by the addition or 
omission of one little word ; for instance, the addition of 
the word * not ' in the wrong place." Another author 
unblushingly observes that " the Sages are in the habit of 
using words which may convey either a true or a false 
impression ; the former to their own disciples and 
children; the latter to the ignorant, the foolish, and the 
unworthy." 

In their endeavour to prevent their works being 
thumbed by the inimical or the illiterate, mediaeval 
philosophers took extraordinary precautions. " The cause 
of this concealment among all wise men," says Roger 
Bacon, "is the contempt and neglect of the secrets of 
wisdom by the vulgar sort, who know not how to use 
those things that are most excellent. Or if they do 
conceive any worthy thing, it is altogether by chance and 
fortune, and they do exceedingly abuse that their know 
ledge to the great damage and hurt of many men, yea, 
even of whole societies ; so that he is worse than mad that 
publisheth any secret, unless he conceal it from the multi 
tude, and in such wise deliver it that even the studious and 
learned shall hardly understand it." 

Happily the Sages are not always in this pessimistic 
and unpromising mood. At times they are compara 
tively jocund, and jibe gently at us for our peevishness 
and want of patience. " Our books," confesses one of 
the writers, " are full of obscurity : philosophers write 
horrid metaphors and riddles to those who are not upon 
a sure foundation, which, like to a running stream, will 

 88 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

carry them down headlong into error and despair, from 
which they can never escape till they so far understand our 
writings as to discern the subject matter of our secrets, 
which being known, the rest is not so hard." 

The professed object of Alchemy was the quest of an 
undefined and undefinable Something wherein was supposed 
to be contained all the powers and potencies of Life, and 
whatever makes Life worth living. The names given to 
this mysterious Something were as many and various as 
the properties it was alleged to possess. We find it 
described as the Elixir of Life, the Water of Life, the 
Universal Medicine, the Philosopher's Stone, the Stone of 
Wisdom, the Essence, the One Thing, the Heavenly Balm, 
the Divine Water, the Virgin Water, the Carbuncle of the 
Sun, the Phœnix, and many other names. 

Just as purity of thought and living were the first 
essentials to the quest of the St. Grail, so do we find purity 
and prayer set down as a sine qua non for Alchemical 
aspirants. " First," as says Basil Valentine, " there should 
be the vocation of God flowing from the depth of a pure 
and sincere heart, and a conscience which should be free 
from all ambition, hypocrisy and vice ; that, when a man 
appears before the Throne of Grace, to regain the health of 
his body, he may come with a conscience weeded of all 
tares, and be changed into a pure temple of God cleansed of 
all that deßles" The words italicised were expressed as 
we have endeavoured to show by the symbol of the St. 
Grail, and it is significant to find that in the version of 
Wolfram von Eschenbach the St. Grail is represented not 
as a vessel but a Stone. 

It is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that the 
Quest of the St. Grail and the Quest of the Philosopher's 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

89 

Stone were interchangeable terms expressing identically the 
same intellectual ideas. 

Conversely we find the Alchemists referring to "our 
true secret vessel and the Garden of the Sages." " The 
philosophers," says Flammei, " have a garden where the 
sun as well morning as evening remains with a most sweet 
dew without ceasing, with which it is moistened ; whose 
earth brings forth trees and fruits which are transplanted 
thither, which also receive nourishment from the pleasant 
meadows. And this is done daily: and there they are 
corroborated and quickened without ever fading." 

Here the allegory saute aux yeux, and it is clear that 
the Garden of the Sages, and the Orchard of the Rose, are 
synonymous terms. According to the author of Alchemy 
and the Alchemists^ the Rose was the symbol of the 
philosophic gold, and it is sufficiently obvious that the real 
aim of Alchemy was the transmutation, not of lead into 
gold, but of the baser metals of Man's soul into the 
Gold of Virtue. The Alchemists themselves assert 
this as plainly as they dared. " Our Art," says one, 
"only arrogates to itself the power of developing 
through the removal of all defects and superfluities, the 
golden nature which the baser metals possess." Again, 
another affirms, " the elements are to be so conjoined that 
the nobler and fuller life may be produced." The means 
by which this Magnum Opus is to be accomplished are 
thus expressed by Paracelsus, " To grasp the invisible 
elements, to attract them by their material correspondences, 
to control, purify, and transform them by the living power 
of the Spirit—this is true Alchemy." 

As Mr Pattison Muir correctly says, " These say 
ings read like sentences in a forgotten tongue. We are 

 v 

90 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

m 

a different world. There is nothing even remotely 
resembling what one finds in a modern book on chemistry." 
The humour of the situation lies in our British method of 
employing a Professor of modern Chemistry to edit treatises 
which belong to an entirely different category—to the 
world of Mysticism. The forgotten tongue in which these 
treatises are written, is a lost language of Symbolism, an 
Art forced into use by the persecution to which all free 
thought was then exposed. This language was called by the 
Alchemists their Lìngua magica^ Lingua Angelorum, and 
sometimes Lingua ipsius Ternarii Sancii. " This tongue," 
writes the author ΌΪΑη Easy Introduction to the Philosopher's 
Gold, "is not only absolutely necessary and wisely fitted 
to veil Nature's secrets from the unworthy and prophane, 
but is also bravely proportioned to the intellectual imagina 
tions of man." It was evolved from the belief that the 
material universe is nothing but a manifestation of a 
spiritual counterpart whence it derives its existence. " The 
sages," says Michael Sendivogius, " have been taught by 
God that this natural world is only an image and material 
copy of the heavenly and spiritual pattern ; that the very 
existence of this world is based upon the reality of its 
heavenly archetype." 

The symbolic language employed by papermakers was 
a consistent code based, as has been seen, upon the char 
acteristics of the objects employed. This same simple and 
coherent system was, as we shall show, also utilised by 
printers ; but the symbols employed by the Alchemists seem 
unhappily to have been selected by the arbitrary choice of 
each writer who left readers to puzzle out the meaning as 
best they could. The difficulty of unravelling an Alchemist's 
true purport is therefore immensely increased. The 

«THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 91 

mysterious " agent " by which the gold of the Philosophers 
was to be produced, has as many names as the Stone itself; 
and it is hardly a subject for surprise that the Grand 
Arcanum of the Sages was by many of their contemporaries 
ridiculed as an elaborate hoax. Frequently we are told 
that the Agent was Mercury—but not the ordinary 
Mercury. " Supplement your common Mercury with the 
inward fire which it needs, and you will soon get rid of 
all superfluous dross." Speaking generally, it will be 
found that by whatever term the Agent is named, it is 
merely a synonym for that elusive and indefinable faculty 
in the mind called " Conscience." Sometimes the Agent 
is Love. " Love is of a transmuting and transform 
ing nature. The great effect of Love is to turn all things 
into its own nature, which is all goodness, sweetness and 
perfection. Where it meets with a barren and heathy 
desert, it transmutes it into a Paradise of Delight ; yea, it 
changeth evil into good, and all imperfection into perfection. 
It is the Divine Stone, the White Stone with the name 
written on it which no one knows but he who hath it. 
In a word it is the Divine Nature, it is God Himself, 
whose essential property it is to assimilate all things with 
Himself, by means of this Divine Elixir whose trans 
forming power and efficacy nothing can withstand." We 
are told that it is quite possible for poor men to manu 
facture the Philosopher's Stone, and that he who has once 
obtained the right Augmentum, has met with the infallible 
Verity, the incorruptible Tincture, "yea, with an infinite 
Treasure, and needs the help of no other Instructor." The 
Alchemists distinguish significantly between common Gold 
and " Our Gold," between Mercury and the " Mercury of 
the Philosophers," Sulphur and the " heavenly Sulphur of 

 ,Ί 

92 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

him whose eyes are opened." Frequently the expressions 
are so plain as to compel the commonest dullard to divine 
their meaning. " Oh foolishness ! Oh blindness of mind ! " 
ejaculates one writer, ** can common salt be the Soap of the 
Philosopher ? Can common Saturn ever become our 
ponderous Ruby Star, our Red Fixed Eagle, our Red 
Fixed Sulphur of Sol, or our Fixed Salamander ever living 
in the Fire ? " 

Again, says Basil Valentine, ** Alas, if men only had 
eyes to see and ears to hear, not merely what I say, but 
to understand the secret meaning, they would no longer 
drink those turbid and unwholesome potions, but would 
hasten hither and receive the limpid water of the well of 
life. It is my design to show that those great doctors 
who think themselves wise, are very fools, while my book 
may make many foolish and unlearned persons the 
depositaries of true wisdom. All men, who are real lovers 
of knowledge and humbly seek after it by day and by 
night, are herewith cordially invited to listen to my 
teaching, to pore over my book with the greatest care, 
and thereby obtain the desire of their hearts. Their 
gratitude will, after my death, raise me from the grave 
and render my name immortal." 

The Editor of the Latin edition of Valentine's 
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, published at Amsterdam 
in 1685, observes that "At the time when Basilius wrote, 
the ignorance of certain physicians [of the soul, i.e. the 
clergy ?] was so great that they administered as medicines 
many poisons [mental ?] in their raw and unpurified state, 
and ignorantly proscribed the means by which the 
Alchemists rendered them truly salutary to the human 
system. Against these pseudo doctors [of Divinity?] 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

93 

honest Basilius and his friends were wont to inveigh with 
the greatest sharpness [preached acutely?]. But in this 
imperfect world truth is not necessarily victorious, and 
though the Alchemists had the better cause, their 
opponents had the advantage of numbers." Just as 
the Perfecti were hounded from town to town, so the 
Alchemists were chivied relentlessly over the face of 
Europe. Allusions to their brutal and sanguinary 
surroundings are of constant occurrence. " I dare affirm," 
says one, "that I do possess more riches than the whole 
known world is worth, but cannot make use thereof 
because of the snares of knaves." Clearly he is re 
ferring to the Treasure of Heaven, for he continues, "I 
disdain, I loathe, this idolising of gold and silver by the 
price and vanity whereof the pomp and vanities of the 
world are celebrated. Ah, filthy evil ! ah, vain nothing 
ness ! Believe ye that I conceal these things out of envy ? 
No, surely, for I protest to thee that I grieve from the 
very bottom of my soul that we are driven, as it were, 
like outcasts from the face of the Lord throughout the 
earth. We travel through many nations just like vaga 
bonds, and dare not take upon ourselves the care of a 
family, neither do we possess any fixed habitation. And 
although we possess all things, yet can we use but a few. 
What, therefore, are we happy in, excepting speculation 
and meditation only. Many do believe (that are strangers 
to the art) that if they should enjoy it they would do such 
and such things; so also even we did formerly believe, 
but being grown more wary by the hazard we have run, 
ive have chosen a more secret method. For whosoever 
hath once escaped imminent peril of his life, he will, believe 
me, become more wise for the time to come." 

 I! 

94 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Although the preceding extracts make it evident that 
many religious men employed the terminology of Alchemy 
in a transfigured and spiritual sense, it is equally certain 
that many Alchemists pursued chemical experiment for its 
own sake, and some seem to have acquired extraordinary 
powers. " I am of opinion from the evidence in hand," 
affirms the scholarly and judicious A. E. Waite, " that 
metallic transmutations did occur in the past." This is, how 
ever, a branch of the subject into which it is unnecessary to 
digress. The ethical Alchemists deprecate " that ungodly 
and accursed goldmaking which hath gotten so much the 
upper hand." " The Alchemists," says van Suchten, " I 
understand not here," he flings off with a fine scorn, " those 
sots who promise riches to others yet are themselves 
beggars." Again, speaking of false Alchemists and their 
fruitless toil, he says : " I answer that this noble art requires 
a sound man ; all these have been sick. They have had 
the gold sickness -which hath darkened their senses^ so that 
they could not understand the terms which the wise men 
use in the description of the Art ; seeking only with hot 
desire that which they shall never find. But what is to be 
found, that they seek not; therefore they work in vain. 
Who is to be blamed, the Art or the artist, that they 
understand nothing ? Alchemy is a pure and uncorrupted 
Virgin [see Figs. 145 and 146]; she casts off the sensual 
man, and will have an intellectual one ; of whom at present 
I see but few." 

I have allowed these Alchemistical philosophers to state 
their case as far as possible in their own language. To 
have paraphrased it would not only have impaired its charm, 
but have weakened its power to convince. The Muse of 
History has, I am persuaded, judged them superficially and 

V-, 

1 

THE PHILOSOPHER'S GOLD" 

95 

with egregious unfairness. " Instead of useful work, " says 
a leading Encyclopaedia, " they compiled mystical trash into 
books, and fathered them on Hermes, Aristotle, Albertus 
Magnus, Paracelsus, and other really great men. Their 
language is a farrago of mystical metaphors. Those who 
had attained full insight into the arcana of the science were 
called Wise; those who were only striving after the light 
were Philosophers ; while the ordinary practisers of the art 
were called Adepts. . . . It is from this degenerate and 
effete school that the prevailing notion of Alchemy is derived 
—a notion which is unjust to the really meritorious Alchemists 
who paved the way for genuine chemistry." Whether 
or no these sentiments represent the final verdict of History 
remains to be seen. For my part, I prefer to accept these 
old philosophers at their own estimation of each other, 
which is expressed in the following dedication from The 
Triumphal Chariot of Alchemy:— 

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS 
VENERABLE, SAINTLY AND BLESSED 

MEN 

ADEPTS OF THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY 

LOVERS OF VIRTUE 

LORDS OF FORTUNE 

DESPISERS OF THE WORLD 

WHOSE LIFE IS HOLINESS IN HOLINESS 

KNOWLEDGE IN KNOWLEDGE 

AND WHOSE WORK CONSISTS IN THE 

RELIEVING OF THE SICK 

AND POOR 

 THE KABBALAH 

97 

CHAPTER VII 

THE KABBALAH 

THE most remarkable of the many philosophers who 
adopted the terminology of Alchemy, was perhaps that 
marvellous shoemaker, Jacob Böhme, or as sometimes spelt 
Behmen. In his Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers^ 
Mr A. E. Waite writes : " The publication of the writings 
of Jacob Böhme caused the Alchemists who were his con 
temporaries to fear that their art could not much longer 
remain a secret, and that the mystic vase in particular would 
be shortly revealed to all. This vase was the VAS INSIGNE 
ELECTIONIS, namely MAN, who is the only all-containing 
subject, and who alone has need to be investigated for the 
eventual discovery of all." 

FIG. 237.—iSth century. 

In Fig. 237 we have the VAS PHILOSOPHORUM^ with 
the word VAS beneath. 

The lettering which occurs so generally on watermarks 
forms a highly interesting branch of the study. It is a 
comparatively easy matter to distinguish between the names 
or initials of the manufacturers and those supplementary 
inscriptions which in many cases form an essential portion 
of the emblem. For instance, in the facsimile on p. 35, 
which represents a complete sheet of paper, " FRANCESCO 
TOLLERI," is manifestly the name of the maker, the word 
" LIBERTAS " (a daring watchword for those days), and the 
letters "SAD P," presumably bearing some additional 
signification. Again in Fig. 82 the letters "I S " may 
reasonably be assumed to stand for J(ESUS) S(ALVATOR), the 
two letters underneath the design denoting the manu 
facturer. To distinguish correctly between these two 
classes of lettering requires a certain amount of care. A 
great variety of manufacturer's initials is to be expected, 
in any case among French marks, as by an Ordinance 
passed in 1582 every Master papermaker was compelled to 
identify his own products by watermarking into each sheet 
either his full name or the initials of his Christian and 
surname. It appears to have been customary for a great 
number of small papermills to cluster together in the same 
neighbourhood, presumably where good water existed. 
In many cases these little mills seem to have possessed 
but one vat, and to have been run by only three or four 
individuals, sometimes not more than the members of one 
family. Their output was apparently collected by factors, 
who rarely troubled to keep separate the different makings ; 
hence it is a common occurrence to meet with thirty or forty 
different papermarks in a single volume. The St. Grail 
was a favourite device among the papermakers of Auvergne. 
In the year 1567 there existed in this district twenty-seven 

li1,·! 

 98 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE. 

papermills. In 1577 no less than fifty small mills were 
destroyed, as they formed a hindrance to military operations. 
In 1717, within the same area, fifty-seven mills were re 
corded as working, forty-two as disused and empty, and 
twenty as being in ruins. 

It is probable, therefore, that many of the initials on 
St. Grail papermarks represent merely the Christian and 
surnames of the makers ; but not necessarily so in all cases. 
In Fig. 172, for example, the lettering is obviously the 
sacred monogram, and beneath Figs. 208 and 209 we have 
the phrase " May God protect it." 

As has already been noted, the religious and intellectual 
freedom of Provence attracted thither large numbers of 
persecuted Jews. One of the reasons for the nefarious 
Albigensian crusade was that the district harboured 
" Jews, Mohammedans, Infidels and Heretics." There is 
little reason to doubt that the fires of persecution fused 
Jew and Heretic into a fellowship of sympathy and 
philosophy. 

Now the more spiritually-minded among the Jews 
cherished a secret system of Theology and Metaphysics, 
which was known as the Kabbalah, Qabalah, or Cabala, 
words derived from the root QBL, meaning " to receive." 
Just as the Albigensian creed was a revolt against the 
formalism and materialism of Roman Catholicism, so the 
Jewish Kabbalah sprang from weariness of the dead letter, 
and represented a reaction against the petrified Judaism of 
the Rabbis. It became, we are told, " a means of handing 
down from one generation to another hidden truths, religious 
notions, secrets of nature, ideas of cosmogony and facts of 
History in a form which was unintelligible to the uninitiated; 
and the revealing of the secrets and the methods of inter- 

THE KABBALAH 99 

pretation were veiled in mystery and only to be approached 
through Religion." 

The resemblance between certain features of the Kabbalah 
and the Christian Trinity induced some Jews to turn 
Christians, and made many speculative Christians favour 
ably inclined towards the Kabbalah. The great Reuchlin is 
a conspicuous example of the many keen minds, such as 
Picus of Mirandola, "justly called the Phoenix of his age," 
which became converts to cabbalistic teaching. From 
whatever point it may be viewed, the Kabbalah is seen to 
be of profound importance. It is a link with literatures 
which are greater than itself, and entered, especially during 
the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, very deeply into 
the thought of Europe. According to Mr Waite, it was 
responsible for much of the strange tissue of symbolism and 
ceremonial that made up the Magic of the Middle Ages, 
and at a later period " it sought to transform Alchemy." 

The points of contact between the Kabbalah and the 
Albigensian Church of the Holy Spirit are therefore so 
numerous that the two systems may be said at times to 
merge completely into one another. 

Among the arts of the Kabbalah was one known as 
notaricon. This consisted of constructing phrases, each 
letter of which formed the initial letter of a word. For 
instance, the name HIRAM was read by the mystics as 
meaning H(OMO) J(ESUS) R(EDEMPTOR) A(NI) M (ARUM): 
others applied the meaning H(OMO) J(ESUS) A(LTISSIMUS) 
M(UNDI) : others again added a C to the Hiram in order to 
make it CH(RiSTUs) J(ESUS), etc. Our everyday word 
AMEN is a survival of a Kabbalistic phrase, and in modern 
Freemasonary are to be found further survivals. I am told 
that the sacred TAU is read by Masons to mean T(HE) 

 ιοο NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

A(UTHOR) (OF THE) U(NIVERSE). Dr Oliver mentions the 
letters STOTA as signifying S(upremo) T(otius) O(rbis) 
T(errarum) A(rchitecto). Another term employed to 
denote the Deity is TGAOTU, which is resolvable intothe simple 
phrase T(HE) G(REAT) A(UTHOR) O(F) T(HE) U(NIVERSE). 

Dante made frequent use of this Kabbahstic system of 
notaricon, concealing beneath outwardly simple words 
meanings which were perfectly well understood by his 
fellow conspirators. " How ingenious," exclaims Gabriele 
Rossetti, " were the mystic writers with their double inter 
pretations ! Who would ever guess that those two words 
TtiAyu and BICE contain a sense so dangerous ? In every 
sectarian work we find examples of combined letters such as 
THA7U and BICE the initials of so many words which convey 
important meanings. The sacred word SHI is divided into 
its elements and becomes three. The initial letters are the 
Sacred Word. Dante made use of such initials not only in 
his BICE and his EL, but we will here bring forward some 
which he wrote in common with coeval authors belonging 
to the secret school." Rossetti then cites the combinations 

TAL and ALTRI. 

It is obvious that many papermarked inscriptions are 
kindred concoctions conveying similarly occult meanings. 

Fio. Z37A.—1736. 

FIG. 238.—1665. 

Many of them consist simply of initials divided by hearts, 
such as Figs. 237A and 238. No papermakers ever bore 
such surnames as Ico, or HIM, or PHO, or MIOVSPI. Com- 

THE KABBALAH 

ΙΟΙ 

mencing from solitary initials we find phrases being gradually 
built up such as follows :— 

p. 

1C. 

R. 
IRÒ. 

MIO. 
HIPI 
PEHIEH 

PHO. PHOMO 
ICO. ICONARD 
RC. RCONARD. 
IROD. 
MIOVSPI 

RCONCANSIN 

We see from the initial letter herewith that the twisted 
pillars were the emblem of Piety and Justice. It is there 
fore perhaps permissible to read the inscription PEHIEH as 
P(ietate) E(t) I(usticia) H(omo) E(st) H(ierosolymitanus). 

FIG. 239. 
lyth century. 

1<3 PEHIEH) 

FIG. 140. 
16th century (?). 

FIG. 241.—Initial. 
Paris, 1671. 

By Piety and Justice Man becomes an inhabitant of the 
New Jerusalem.1 The transposition of the H and I is, I 
think, justifiable, for the reason that the practice of 
anagrammatising was one of the arts of the Kabbalah 

1 I was told by the late Dr Wm. Krisch that the letters H. P. might be read 
Hierosolyma pete = I seek the New Jerusalem. The word Hierosolymitanus, i.e. a 
hierosolymite, or inhabitant of the sacred Jerusalem, is used by St Augustine. See 
Murray's Ne<w English Dictionary. 

 102 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Fio. »43.—1469· 

Fio. 244. 

Fio. »45.—1395. F«3· *46·—'44°· 

Fra »48.—1411. Fio. »49.—iS»fi. Fio. »50.—1587. 

THE KABBALAH 

103 

Fio. 251.—1403. 

FIG. »55.—1472. 

Fio. »5».—1385. Fio. »53.—1578. Fio. »54.—1546. 

Fio. »57.—1406. 

Fio. 258.—1408. 

 FIG. 242.—1575. 

104 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

known under the term Tbemura. In Fig. 242 we have a 
rude but unmistakable figure of Justice holding her sword 
and balance. Piety and Justice were also 
among the meanings attributed to the 
Fleur-de-Lys. The Lily, according to 
Dr Mackey, " is the symbol of divinity, 
of purity, and abundance, and of a love 
most complete in perfection, charity, and 
benediction, . . . hence the Lily's three 
leaves in the arms of France meaneth PIETY, JUSTICE, and 
CHARITY." 

Important meanings were attached by the Kabbalah 
not only to numbers—such as the sacred " 4 "—but to the 
various letters of the alphabet singly and in combination. 

The significance of the letter Y has already been noted. 
G was regarded as a synonym of the Hebrew Yodi and 
implied the Architect of the Universe. The letter P stood 
for Phoded, the Redeemer. D was the symbol of growth 
and expansion. But by far the most sacred of all letters 
was M, which was regarded as both feminine and masculine. 
It was made to symbolise water, the great Deep, and 
stands as a glyph for the waves, thus /vv. In Figs. 
251 to 255 we have papermarks of this sacred M. In its 
ordinary aspect this was an emblem of the Virgin Mary, 
but the Virgin Mary undoubtedly symbolised Mare, the 
cleansing and ever pure Sea; whence arose the Catholic 
saying that the Ave of Mary reverses the curse of Eva. 
Observe how in Fig. 256 the designer has surrounded his 
two swords with the Mundane Egg, at the head of which 
is the Trinity. Observe the wavy line of the Spirit 
descending until it forms S S whence it arises. Lest 
we should misunderstand this wavy line, the artist has 

THE KABBALAH 

105 

tacked on an identifying M. In Figs. 257 and 258 the 
designer has ingeniously combined the M of Mare and the 
Tau of Salvation. 

Beneath Fig. 259 herewith will be noticed a curious 
inscription, of which the final portion reads LE GARD. As 

FIG. 156.—I7th century. 

(S5ZLE 

FIG. 259.—1640. 

we have met elsewhere with the phrase DIEU LE GARD, the 
thought at once arises that the Kabbalistic AA/ is 
another mode of expressing DIEU. It is, I think, un 
questionably a monogram of the letters A U M, the U being 
written as was then customary V, and the M being 
extended into the glyph -/\Λ/ = XWxvv. The second 
A is probably to enable the mystic phrase to be read 
backwards and forwards. In Faustusi Marlowe refers to 
" Jehovah's Name, forward and back-ward anagram- 
matiz'd." 

Now the three letters A U M denoting Creation, 
Conservation, and Transformation constituted a mystic 
word standing for the unutterable Name of the Creator. 
It is to be found in the doctrines and ceremonial of other 
nations, as well as among the Jews. It is said to have 
been used as a password in the Egyptian Mysteries. In 

 :ί 

l'i 

ί 

Λ 

ιο6 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the Rites of Hindoostan it was bestowed upon the aspirant 

^ 
under the triliteral form „ ,, at the completion of his 

initiation, and then only by whispering it in his ear. 

The complicated mark under which the phrase 
Aumlegard occurs is generally to be found in sheets of 
paper watermarked with a St. Grail, and is apparently 
a symbolic representation of the method by which Man 
may become regenerate, and hence a Temple of the Holy 
Spirit. The two emblems are complementary to each 
other, and epitomise the Hermetic Art. The Alchemists 
held there was a duality in Man. " Our art," said they, 
" is to compound two principles." " If they are united," 
says Ripley in his Compound of Alchemy, " they will 
certainly operate one upon the other, and alter and change 
each other from thing to thing, and from state to state, 
until all come to one Nature and Substance Regenerate, 
which is a new Heavenly Body. . . . Thus they who sow in 
tears shall reap in joy, and he who goeth forth mourning 
and carrying precious seed shall return with an abundance 
of increase, with their hands filled with sheaves and their 
mouths with the praises of the Lord." 

Under the veiling terms, " sun and moon," " active and 
passive," "agent and patient," and hundreds of other 
similar expressions, the mediaeval philosophers indicated 
this twofold character, and remind us of the ancient saying 
that Man is a charioteer driving a light and a dark horse. 
Swedenborg expressed the same duality by the terms 
" Will " and " Understanding," by the reconcilement of 
which man becomes an angel. In Freemasonry the same 
idea seems to be conveyed by the two Pillars of the Porch, 
i.e. the twin natures that stand in the threshold of the 

THE KABBALAH 

107 

temple of man's soul. It was taught by a school of 
philosophers that the Mediator, the only means of AT-ONE- 
MENT between the dual and conflicting principles of man, was 
Christ_the personification of the SPIRIT OF TRUTH. Thus 
the anonymous editor of an edition of the works of Fénelon, 
issued in 1723, writes: "It is in this double purification 

FIG. 261.—1640. 

CLD 

FIG. 262.—141$. 

B 

Fio. 263.—1641. 

FIG. 264. 
I7th century. 

FIG. 26j. 
I7th century. 

of the understanding and of the will that the interior life 
consists, and it is God alone that can operate by His 
action, immediate and central. It is He alone as Light 
and Love that can dispel the darkness of our souls and fix 
the agitations of our hearts." The watermarks herewith 
are perfect emblems of this AT-ONE-MENT. The two 
pillars or principles, it will be observed, are in every case 

 1Ï I·' 
:Ί !' 

108 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

connected to each other by symbols of the Divine, either 
the Grapes, i.e. the True Vine, the Trefoil of the Trinity, 
or by initials that denote the Deity. We are told that 
C typified " the Omnipotent and Eternal Author of the 
Universe, having neither beginning nor ending. It also 
calls to our remembrance the grand and awful Hereafter 
or Futurity, where we hope to enjoy endless bliss and 
everlasting life." 

A and B formed the word AB, which signified God the 
Father ; A and L formed the syllable AL, which signified 

THE KABBALAH 

109 

Fie. 166.—lyth century. 

FIG. 267.—1641. 

FIG. 168.—1636. 

FIG. 269.-, 7th century. FJG. 1?ο._τ ?th century_ 

The Word; LB meant Spirit, and BAL meant Lord. 
By various combinations of A, B, C, and L, the Kabbalists 
formed sentences reading Father-Lord, Word-Lord, Spirit- 

Lord, and so forth. " By three" says the author of Alchemy 
and the Alchemists, " they add to the two principles a third 
as the tie of the two, which is really the one, which, with 
the two, makes their trinity of principles, 3 in i." 

The letter R in Fig. 262 may, I think, safely be read 
as R(edemptor). The large A's supporting the grapes in 
Figs. 260, 269 and 270 are probably Alphas. Whether 
the curly bases to these emblems are intended to represent 
Omegas is not so apparent. 

It should be borne in mind that emblems were always 
intended as Thought stimulators. Each designer took a 
delight in expressing his own ideas, either by modifying 
or elaborating the designs of his co-workers. Quarles' 
definition of an emblem as a silent parable may be accepted 
as excellent, but it follows that each parable — some 
of them are compact essays in Philosophy—requires 
close study and most guarded interpretation. Doubtless 
these emblems of the AT-ONE-MENT contain deeper 
meanings than any I have been able to suggest, but I 
think the following verses, written sometime prior to 1677, 
practically sum up their teaching. 

A STRING OF PEARLS 

God's spirit falls on me like dewdrops on a rose, 

If I but like a rose my heart to Him unclose ; 

The soul wherein God dwells—what church can holier be ? 

Becomes a walking tent of heavenly majesty. 

Lo ! in the silent night a child to God is born, 

And all is brought again that ere was lost or lorn ; 

Could but thy soul, O man, become a silent night, 

God would once more be born in thee and set all things right. 

 no NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Ye know GOD but as Lord, hence Lord His name with ye ; 
I feel Him but as LOVE, hence Love His name with me ! 
How far from here to heaven ? Not very far, my friend ; 
A single hearty step will all thy journey end. 

Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, 
If He's not born in thee, thy soul is all forlorn ; 
The Cross on Golgotha will never save thy soul ; 
The Cross in thine own heart alone can make thee whole. 

Christ rose not from the dead, Christ is still in the grave, 

If thou for whom He died art still of sin the slave. 

Hold there ! Where runnest thou ? Know Heaven is in thee ; 

Seekest thou for God elsewhere, His face thou'lt never see. 

In all eternity no love can be so sweet 
As where man's heart with God in unison doth beat. 
Whate'er thou lovest, man, that, too, become thou must ; 
Good if thou lovest good—dust if thou lovest dust. 

Ah ! would the heart be but a manger for the birth, 
God would once more become a little child on earth ' 
Immeasurable is the Highest ; who but knows it ? 
And yet a human heart can perfectly enclose it ! 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 

IT is remarkable that the early History of Printing is 
wrapped in an obscurity almost as profound as that 
enveloping Papermaking. Four centuries of keen 
research have not enabled Historians to determine with any 
certainty either the date of its invention, the country where it 
was first practised, or the name of the first printer. That 
printing—the most epoch-making of all the industrial Arts 
—should have been thus suddenly and mysteriously sprung 
upon Europe without a hint as to its origin, is evidence 
that the inventor or introducer was sufficiently self- 
sacrificing to put forward no claim for recognition—a 
claim which by means of his own new born art he might 
so easily have maintained. 

In my remaining chapters, I design to show that 
certainly many of the mediaeval printers were Albigensian 
in their principles, and that in all probability the obscurity 
that surrounds them is due to the reticence and self- 
sacrifice inculcated by their philosophy. Like Fénelon 
they seem to have adopted the maxim " Love to be 
unknown," and like Sir Thomas Browne they made a 
total adieu to the world, not caring for a monument, 
history, or epitaph, not so much as the memory of their 
names to be found anywhere but in the universal Register 
of God. 

 112 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

It will be borne in mind that Papermaking is nearly 
200 years older than Printing, and that it was almost 
entirely in the hands of the industrious Albigenses seems 
to be clearly indicated. As makers of paper the Albigenses 
must necessarily have come into close relations with the 
men who used and bought paper from them, and there is 
therefore nothing surprising or irrational in the suggestion 
that printers were deeply tinctured with Albigensian ideas. 

When the Labour-loving and Light-loving heretics were 
exiled by successive persecutions, many of them undoubtedly 
followed the pre-typographic art of scrivenery. Richard 
de Bury in his Philobiblon mentions that "there was 
always about us in our halls no small assemblage of 
antiquaries, scribes, book-binders, correctors, illuminators, and 
generally of all such persons as were qualified to labour in 
the service of books." In 1403 there was already formed 
in London a Society or Brotherhood of the Craft of 
Writers of Text Letter and "those commonly called 
Limners," or Illuminators. Unfortunately my opportunities 
of examining illuminated MSS. have not been favourable, 
but even the few specimens that have come under my 
notice reveal many indications of their workmanship in the 
form of Albigensian emblems woven into the initials and 
borders. 

The intermediate stage between engrossing and modern 
printing is represented by the so-called Block-books, that 
is to say, books printed not from movable types, but 
from engraved blocks of wood or metal. It is a signifi 
cant fact that the earliest of all the Block Books was 
the Biblia Pauper um or Bible of the Poor, so called 
because it was designed for the edification of those who 
could not afford the exorbitant prices required for ordinary 

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 113 

manuscript copies. It is not known who was responsible 
for the inception of this work, which was reissued later 
from Bamberg, Paris and Vienna. Again the unknown 
benefactor was superior to praise or fame. 

The earliest reference to printing from movable types 
occurs in a fifteenth-century document discovered at 
Avignon. Therein it appears that a silversmith of Prague 
was experimenting in printing at Avignon in 1444, and had 
undertaken to cut a set of Hebrew types for a Jew whom 
he had previously instructed in the art of printing. No 
specimens of his work are known, but the reference is 
important in that it associates Hebrew with printing. 

At this period Hebrew was a dangerous thing to 
handle. When Reuchlin (1455-1522) in his earlier days 
lectured upon it, he had to do so in secrecy for fear of the 
monks. The Jews, evermore an accursed race, had 
crucified Jesus Christ: what could be plainer than that 
anyone who dabbled in their language was an outcast and a 
heretic ? When Reuchlin pointed out errors in the Vulgate, 
derived from mistranslations of the original, and was 
rebuked for so doing, he answered in the spirit of Dante 
and Galileo, " I revere St Jerome as an Angel ; 1 respect 
De Lyra as a Master ; but I adore TRUTH as a God." 

The prominence and intellectuality of Reuchlin rendered 
him obnoxious to the Church. Moreover, he was a 
Kabbalist ; and had taught a Canon of Bamberg how to 
discover in a single verse of Exodus the seventy-two 
Kabbalistic names of God. If, as the monkish saying went, 
every good grammarian was a heretic, how much more a 
scholar who smutted himself with such unlawful learning ? 

So strong became the clerical feeling against Reuchlin 
that a contemptible trap was laid for his undoing. He was 

H 

 114 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

required by the Archbishop of Mainz to express his opinion 
on the vital question whether all Hebrew Books, except the 
Old Testament, ought not forcibly to be taken from the 
Jews and burned i1 Reuchlin's characteristic reply was 
"that the Jews' books should not be burned^but that with 
reasonable debate they should with God's help be gently 
and kindly brought over to our Faith." 

New batteries of bigotry were unmasked by this reply. 
Behind the Archbishop were seen to be the Order of the 
Dominicans, and behind the Dominicans the Inquisition, 
with all of whom it became no longer a question of Hebrew 
literature, but of bringing Reuchlin to book for his damnable 
and pernicious heresies. 

It is unnecessary to go into details of the prolonged 
struggle that ensued. For six years the controversy was 
waged with the extremest bitterness. On the side of 
Reuchlin rallied all the poets and scholars of the age, 
knowing his cause to be their own. They defended him 
in prose and verse, by serious argument and by scath 
ing satire. ** Salve Reuchlinista " became a common form 
of address in speech and writing, and says Dr Beard, ** The 
printers and booksellers -were on the same side : the 
complaint was made both then and later that the conser 
vative party did not receive fair play from the new art of 
printing. It was a struggle to the death, the young men 
against the old, the classics against the schoolmen, scholar 
ship against ignorance, light against darkness." In our own 
country a similar battle was being fought on a smaller scale. 
An Ecclesiastic, preaching at St Paul's Cross, is reported 
to have said : ** We must root out printing, or printing will 
root out us." The mediseval censorship of the printing 

1 On two occasions in History the Talmud was thus confiscated and burned. 

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 115 

press arose from the jealousy of the clergy, who opposed the 
spread of education, partly because they saw that a little 
CknowledgeJ'was a dangerous thing, but mainly because they 
feared their own prestige would suffer. This feeling existed 
before the invention of printing, the penalty in this country 
for reading scripture in the vernacular being forfeiture by 
the offenders and their heirs for ever of land, cattle, body, 
life and goods. They were further condemned as Heretics 
to God, enemies to the Crown, and most errant traitors to 
the land : they were refused right of sanctuary, and if they 
persisted in their offence or relapsed after a pardon, were first 
hanged for treason against the king, and then burned for 
Heresy towards God. Thus the clergy upheld and en 
couraged a censorship of the press. 

The first production of Blockbook printing was, as has 
been mentioned, a poor man's Bible. The first known book1 
printed from movable types was the wonderful specimen 
of workmanship known as the"Mazarin" Bible (1455). 
** It is," says Hallam, " a very striking circumstance that 
the high-minded inventors of this great art [printing] tried 
at the very outset so bold a flight as the printing an entire 
Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It was 
Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength, and radiant 
armour, ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and 
destroy her enemies." The first ** prophane " author who 
was honoured by being put into type was William 
Durandus of Provence, from whose Rationale printed in 

1459 I have so frequently quoted. Although good 
grammar was esteemed ecclesiastically as ** Heresy," in 

1460 the Latin Grammar and Dictionary entitled Catholicon 
was published at Maintz. The printer's " note " to this 

1 The first known specimen of type printing is a Papal Indulgence. 

 no NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

work ran significantly as follows, "By the assistance of 
the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of children 
become eloquent, and Who often reveals to babes what He 
hides from the wise, this renowned book, the Catbolicon, 
was printed and perfected in the year of the Incarnation 
1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which belongs to the 
illustrious German nation, whom God has consented to prefer 
and to raise with such an exalted light of the mind and 
free grace, above the other nations of the earth), not by 
means of reed, stile, or pen, but by the admirable propor 
tion, harmony, and connection of the punches and types." 

Thus the art of printing was from its cradle not only 
the Handmaid of practical religion, symbolism, and the New 
Learning, but we find it peculiarly identified with Mysticism. 
Between the years 1474 and 1500 were issued no less than 
eighty editions of The Imitation of Christ, a work which 
according to Dean Milman gathers and concentres in its 
pages all that is elevating, passionate and profoundly pious 
in all the older mystics. Strangely enough the authorship 
of this enormously popular and comparatively modern work 
is so obscure that it is still the subject of controversy. 

Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471), the author to whom it 
is popularly assigned, was one of a fraternity known as 
The Brethren of the Common Life, obviously an offshoot 
of Albigensianism. The Brethren took no irrevocable 
vows, but lived simply and earned their bread "by 
teaching children and by copying books." 

" The first Brussels press," says Miss Rawlings, " was 
established by the Brethren of the Common Life, a com 
munity who had hitherto made a speciality of the production 
of manuscript books. At what date they began to print in 
• Brussels is uncertain, but their first dated book, the Gnoto- 

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 

117 

solitos sive speculum conscientiœ, is of the year 1476. The 
Brethren also had an earlier press at Marienthal, near Mentz, 
and subsequently set up others at Rostock, Nuremburg, and 
Gouda." 

Their services to education are wholly beyond com 
putation. Among their members is to be numbered not 
only Thomas à Kempis, but John Wessel (b. 1420), who 
wandered as scholar and teacher throughout Europe, and 
by his learning and character earned the title of " Lux 
Mundi" A pupil of à Kempis was Rudolf Agrícola 
(d. 1485), " who deserves to be called the restorer of Greek 
learning in Germany." Another pupil was Dringenberg, 
who in 1450 founded a school which soon numbered 900 
pupils, and " was the centre from which the new learning 
spread itself along the upper Rhine." Another formed 
a similar school at Munster, while yet another had the 
supreme glory of tutoring the youthful Erasmus. 

Not only were the Albigenses known in German 
History as the " Brethren of the Common Life," but we 
meet with them under terms such as Hussites, Lollards, 
Brethren of the Free Spirit, Homines Intelligenti^, Francis 
cans (founded by the ex-Troubadour, St Francis of Assisi), 
Friends of God ; and Waldenses. So honeycombed was 
Europe by these Heretics that it was said a Waldensian 
travelling from Antwerp to Rome could sleep every night 
at the house of a fellow believer. 

In his Hours ivitb the Mystics, R. A. Vaughan gives 
some interesting pen pictures of German mysticism in the 
fourteenth century. From his imaginary chronicle of a 
Strasburg armourer, I extract the following :— 

" It seems but yesterday that he and I were boys to 
gether, taking our reading and writing lessons from that· 

 ii8 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

poor old Waldensian whom my father sheltered in our 
house. How we all loved him ! I never saw my father so 
troubled at anything as at his death. Our house has been 
ever since a refuge for such persecuted wanderers. 

" The wrath of Popes, prelates, and inquisitors hath been 
especially kindled of late years against sundry communities, 
sects, and residues of sects, which are known by the name 
of Beghards, Béguines, Lollards, Kathari, Fratricelli, Brethren 
of the Free Spirit, etc. Councils, they tell me, have been 
held at Cologne, Mayence, and Narbonne, to suppress the 
Beghards. Yet their numerous communities in the Nether 
lands and the Rhineland are a blessing to the poor folk, to 
whom the hierarchy are a curse. The clergy are jealous of 
them. They live single, they work with their hands, they 
nurse the sick, they lay out the dead, they lead a well- 
ordered and godly life in their Beguinasia, under the 
Magister or Magistra; but they are bound by no vows, 
fettered by no harassing minutiae of austerity, and think 
the liberty of the Spirit better than monkish servitude. 
Some of them have fallen into the notions of those 
enthusiastic Franciscans who think the end of the world 
at hand, and that we live in, or near, the days of Antichrist. 
And no wonder, when the spiritual heads of Christendom 
are so unchristian. There are some sturdy beggars who 
wander about the country availing themselves of the name 
of Beghard to lead an idle life. These I excuse not. They 
say some of these Beghards claim the rank of apostles—that 
they have subterranean rooms, where both sexes meet to 
hear blasphemous preachers announce their equality with 
God. Yea, worse charges than these—even of grossest 
lewdness—do they bring. I know many of them, both 
here and at Cologne, but nothing of this sort have I seen, 

THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 

119 

or credibly heard of. They are the enemies of clerical pomp 
and usurpation, and some, I fear, hold strange fantastical 
notions, coming I know not whence. But the churchmen 
themselves are at fault, and answerable for it all. They 
leave the artisans and labourers in besotted ignorance, and 
when they do get a solitary religious idea that comes home 
to them, ten to one but it presently confounds or overthrows 
what little sense they have. Many deeply religious minds 
among us, both of laity and clergy, are at heart as indignant 
at the crimes of the hierarchy as can be the wildest mob- 
leading fanatic who here and there appears for a moment, 
haranguing the populace, denouncing the denouncers, and 
bidding men fight sin with sin. We who sigh for reform, 
who must have more spiritual freedom, have our secret 
communications, our meetings now and then for counsel, 
our signs and counter-signs. Folks call the Rhineland the 
Parsons' Walk—so full is it of the clergy, so enjoyed and 
lorded over by them. Verily, it is at least as full of those 
hidden ones, who, in various wise which they call heresy, 
do worship God without man coming in between. 

The tide of the time is with us.1 Our once famous 
Godfrey of Strasburg is forgotten. Wolfram von Eschen 
bach is the universal model. His Parziva/ and Titurel 
live on the lips of the many rhymesters and minstrels who 
wander from town to town now, as once they did from 
court to court, and castle to castle. It is the religiousness 
and the learning of Wolfram that finds favour for him and 
countless imitators. This is the good sign I mean. Our 
singers have turned preachers. They are practical, after 
their fashion. They are a Book of Proverbs, and give us 
maxims, riddles, doctrines, science, in their verses. If they 
sing of chivalry, it is to satirize chivalry—such knighthood 

 120 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

as now we have. They are spreading and descending to 
wards the people. Men may have their songs of chivalry 
in Spain, where, under the blessed St. lago, good knights 
and true have a real crusade against those heathen hounds 
the Moors, whom God confound. But here each petty 
lord in his castle has nothing to do but quarrel with his 
neighbour and oppress all weaker than himself. What to 
such men, robbing, drinking, devouring their living with 
harlots, are Arthur and the Round Table, or Oliver and 
Roland ? So the singers come to us. In good sooth, the 
old virtues of knighthood—its truth and honour, its chastity 
and courage—are found far more among the citizens than 
with the nobles." 

Finis. SoliOeo honor to'gloria infecttlaße- 
culorum.Amen. 

FIG. 271.—Tailpiece. lyth century. 

CHAPTER IX 
PRINTERS' DEVICES 

IN his Histoire Littéraire des Vaudois, Montet quotes 
from a Waldensian manuscript dated 1192, which 
concludes with the words "Laus et gloria Christi Deo 
Grafías: Amen" 

The piety of the early printers manifested itself in a 
similar form, and for 200 years we find few printed books 
that do not terminate in a doxology such as " Laus Deo" 
"Soli Deo Gratia" "Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed 
nomini tuo da gloriami Sometimes these postscripts 
assume a Kabbalistic form, and after the word Finis 
are to be seen mere letters such as DOM, LSD, OAMDG, etc. 
These are easily resolved into phrases — D(eo) O(ptimo) 
M(aximo); L(aus) S(oli) D(eo), and so forth. At times 
we find little passages from Scripture thus : 

Job xii. 9—The hand of the Lord hath wrought this. 
Psalm cxvi. 12—What shall I render to the Lord ? 

In Fig. 271 it will be seen that the printer has added 
a woodcut to his doxology. The device of a vase or 
basket full of flowers is an ornament frequently em 
ployed not only as a tailpiece, but as a printers' mark. 
According to Durandus, " Flowers are portrayed to re 
present the fruits of good works springing from the roots 
of virtue." In Montet's Histoire Littéraire, I find an 
Albigensian stating, " It is our duty to gather our works 
and offer them to God." Sometimes in lieu of flowers, 
we find a dish of fruits, as in Fig. 272. 

 122 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

" One of the most important and interesting phases in 
connection with printers' marks," says Mr W. Roberts, the 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

123 

FIG. z-jz.—Tailpiece. 1674. 

most recent writer on this subject, "is undoubtedly the 
motif of the pictorial embellishments. Both the precise 
origin and the object of many marks are now lost to us." 
He adds, "We do not propose offering any kind of explana 
tion for these singular marks." 

The attitude of Bibliography towards printers' orna 
ments is, we thus see, on a par with its knowledge of paper- 
marks, and by suggesting a rational explanation for both 
these mysterious forms of craftmanship, I am treading, not 
on controversial ground, but peacefully surveying a tract of 
research hitherto uncharted. 

The current opinion about printers' marks is summed 
up by Mr Roberts as follows : " Shorn of all romance and 
glamour which seem inevitably to surround every early 
phase of typographic art, a printer's device may be described 
as nothing more or less than a trademark." Doubtless in 
many cases they came to be regarded as trademarks, but the 
suggestion that they served no other purpose is unwarranted. 
On the contrary, it is clear that in a great many cases 
printers' devices were emblems pure and simple. I write, 
for instance, with a Histoire Prophane before me, written 
by a Mons. L. E. Du PIN, and published at Antwerp in five 

volumes by Jean Francois Lucas (1717). The title-pages 
of these five volumes each bears a different mark, one of 
them reproduced in Fig. 294. Similarly the works of 
Fénelon, published in four volumes at Antwerp in 1723 
by Henry de la Meule, bear four different emblems on the 
title-pages, one of them reproduced in Fig. 299. 

Not only do we find printers using a variety of de 
signs in the same books, but identical emblems were used 
by different printers. Now a trademark is the immediate 
jewel of a craftsman's soul, and I cannot reconcile the em 
ployment in common of certain marks with the theory that 
they were " nothing more or less " than trade devices. 

There is honour among printers which would veto such 
a practice, and the craftsmen we are discussing were ad 
mittedly men of distinguished integrity. Mr Roberts him 
self comments upon their partiality for Scriptural designs. 
" It will not be necessary," says he, " to enter deeply into 
the motives which induced so many of the old printers to 
select their devices, or the illustrations of their marks from 
Biblical sources, and it must suffice to say that if the object 
is frequently hidden from us to-day the fact of the extent 
of their employment cannot be controverted." 

Commenting on the frequent use of the Cross, Mr 
Roberts quotes the opinion of M. Delalain that this fact 
had its origin from printers' " affiliation with a religious 
Fraternity." M. Delalain's surmise came very near the truth. 
Let us now apply the touch of symbolism to these orna 
ments and see what it yields. In Figs. 273 and 274 we have 
an eagle flying from town holding the device " By mov 
ing." Surrounding Fig. 273 are roses which may be read 
as the emblem of secrecy, or of the heretical philosophy, or 
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PRINTERS' DEVICES 

»25 

genses leavened Europe. " We fly from town to town," 
says the Perfect One quoted on page 46. "We travel 
through many nations just like vagabonds," says the 
Alchemist quoted on page 93. Peter Waldo became a 
wandering exile, and his followers were in some countries 
termed " passagenes" on account of their roving proclivities. 
It was by wandering and teaching that the typical John 
Wessel earned the sobriquet " Lux Mund'i" 

" In those days," says Vaughan, " almost every great 
scholar was also a great traveller. The wanderings of 
Agrippa and his theosophic brethren contributed not a little 
to the progress and diffusion of occult science. These 
errant professors of magic, like those aerial travellers the 
insects, carried everywhere with them the pollen of their 
mystic Lily, the symbol of theosophy, and sowed the fructify 
ing particles in minds of kindred growth wherever they came." 

The Troubadours were beloved vagabonds, knights errant 
in the service of the Lady Sophia, but not wandering merely 
as the breath of fancy took them. Arrangements seem to 
have been made for systematic circuits. " Many shall run to 
and fro, and knowledge shall be increased," was a popular 
motto frequently employed by authors. Our English scholar, 
Joseph Mede, maintained that this increase of knowledge 
had been manifested at the beginning of the twelfth century 
by the discovery of a new and up to that time unheard-of 
principle of interpreting the prophecies relating to Anti 
christ. Instead of a personality, Antichrist was then and 
subsequently regarded as the series of Roman pontiffs or 
the Papacy—" a deep and subtle corruption which had 
usurped the name of Christianity." 

Mede based this interpretation on an Albigens'ian 
manuscript dated 1120. In 1494 a Waldensian woman 

 126 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

charged with heresy, testified that her pastor had told her 
that there was a small number of people in the world 
without whom the world must perish ; that this little 
flock had learnt by the commandments of God how to 
serve Him, and that they "travelled about the world to 
instruct men how they might adore and honour Him, and 
to reform the abuses of the Church of Rome." Thus from 
whatever point of approach we view Movendo, the motto 
is seen to be identified with heresy. 

The Eagle was an emblem of soaring thoughts. 
" Some writings," says a philosopher, " have more of the 
eagle in them than others." The reader will also recall 
the passage where Durandus likens the Gospel to an 
eagle because of the words : " He came flying upon the 
wings of the wind." " The nature of the eagle," says an 
old writer, " is to bend her eyes full into the sunne beams. 
So strong is her sighte that she can even see into the great 
and glaring sunne." Hence the eagle was regarded as the 
bird of Light, and was sometimes used as a symbol of the 
Holy Spirit. 

FIG. 277.—Device of Joannes 
Theodore. Jena, 1670. 

FIG. 278.—Device of Abraham 
Wolfgang. Amsterdam, 1687. 

Figs. 277, 278, and 279 represent a Fox finding honey 
in a tree : the motto " By seeking." The stories of how 
Reynard the Fox outwitted his traditional enemy Isengrim 
the Wolf, were popular in Europe for many centuries. If 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

127 

we substitute Heresy for Reynard, and Rome for Isengrim, we 
can understand why these seemingly childish stories enjoyed 
such an immense vogue. " These heretic foxes," percipiently 
said Gregory IX., " have different faces, but they all hang 
together by the tails." 

At the foot of Fig. 280 will be observed a chameleon. 
This little reptile, by reason of its colour-changing habits, 

Fio. 279.—Device of Robert Roger. 
Berlin, 1700. 

FIG. z8o.—Initial Letter. 
London, 1688. 

was regarded as the emblem of slyness, dissimulation and 
cunning. The honey that is being found by the many- 
faced fox of heresy is bien entendu, celestial honey. We 

Fio. 281.—Headpiece. London, 1664. 

find De Bury apostrophising books as " rocks flowing with 
honey, nay, combs of honey, by which the human mind 
is nourished." A few lines on he likens them to " vines 

 128 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

of Engadi." In Fig. 281 we see an angel offering the vine 
and honeysuckle—the flower that gathers and suckles its 
sweetness from the dew of God's spirit. It is possibly 
for the reason that the Albigenses were themselves such 
devoted and laborious honey-makers, that Dante figures a 
swarm of bees encircling the Rose of Paradise. The 
passage is as follows :— 

" In fashion, as a snow-white rose, lay then 
Before my view the saintly multitude, 
Which in His own blood Christ espoused. Meanwhile, 
That other host, that soar aloft to gaze 
And celebrate his glory, whom they love, 
Hover'd around ; and, like a troop of bees, 
Amid the vernal sweets alighting now, 
iiow, clustering where their fragrant labour glows, 
Flew downward to the mighty flower, or rose 
From the redundant petals, streaming back 
Unto the steadfast dwelling of their joy. 
Faces they had of flame, and wings of gold : 
The rest was whiter than the driven snow : 
And, as they flitted down into the flower, 
From range to range, fanning their plumy loins, 
Whisper'd the peace and ardour, which they won 
From that soft winnowing. Shadow none, the vast 
Interposition of such numerous flight 
Cast, from above, upon the flower, or view 
Obstructed aught. For, through the universe, 
Wherever merited, celestial light 
Glides freely, and no obstacle prevents." 

Among the little animals which figure prominently 
among printers' marks, one of the most popular was the 
squirrel. We learn that " when the squirrel is hunted she 
cannot be driven to the ground, unlesse extremitie of 
faintnesse cause her to do so through an unwilling com 
pulsion, for such is the stately mind of this little beast that 
while her limbes and strength lasteth she tarrieth and 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

129 

saveth herself in the tops of tall trees, disdaining to come 
down for every harm or hurt which she feeleth : knowing, 
indeed, her greatest danger to rest below amongst the dogs 
and busie hunters. From whence may be gathered a 
perfect pattern for us, to be secured from all the wiles and 
hungrie chasings of the treacherous devil : namely, that we 
keep above in the loftie palaces of heavenlie meditations, 
for there is small securitie in things on earth ; and greatest 
ought to be our fear of danger, when we leave to look and 
think of heaven." 

Figs. 282 and 283 represent a squirrel cracking nuts. 
Speaking of books, De Bury says, "Most men incon 
siderately fling away the nut before they have broken the 

FIG. i8z.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1719. 

FIG. z8j.—-Tailpiece. 
Cologne, 1708. 

FIG. 184.—Headpiece. London, 1641. 

shell and reached the kernel." What De Bury means by 
"kernel" is made clear by the translator of Diodati's 
Pious and Learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible 
(1664). This anonymous writer observes that "the 

 l t 

I I 

130 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

written word of God—I mean not the shell or outside of 
a bare literal sense (there is more in it), but the inside and 
kernel of a true spiritual meaning therein comprised—is a 
masse of infinite delights." 

It is obvious that the squirrel (" the little animal which 
gladly hides itself") was used by printers as an emblem of 
cracking away the outward husk of the Letter and feeding 
on the Spirit, another mode of expressing the lesson that 
papermakers conveyed by their snuffers. 

Around Fig. 282 will be noticed the rose of secret 
heresy, the lily of pure life, and the olive of peace. 

It will be remembered that the Albigenses considered 
that the Hereafter would be enriched by the contemplation 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

FIG. 285.—1511. 

FIG. 286.—1464. 

FJO. 191.—1596. 

of the ineffable loveliness of the Holy Spirit. The 
iridescent beauty of its plumage led to the peacock being 
accepted as an emblem of the Holy Spirit. In Figs. 285 
to 289 we see some of the uses to which printers and paper- 
makers applied this emblem. In Eastern mythology Sara- 
isvati, the goddess of sacred or secret knowledge, is usually 
depicted as riding on a peacock. The eyes on the feathers 

FIG. 187.—Headpiece. London, 1641. 

FIG. 288.—Initial. London, 1620. 

FIG. 189.—Tailpiece, 
Paris, 1650. 

FIG. 290.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1721. 

 132 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

of the bird's tail symbolised the sleepless eyes that see all 
things. To one who had the ambition to advance in sacred 
knowledge, they were a reminder that he must have the 
hundred eyes of Argus to see and comprehend all things. 
As the Alchemist warned us: "Do not believe what 
Basilius here says, but keep your eyes •wide open." 

Mrs. G. F. Watts describes the peacock as the bird of 
Hope, the hope of immortality, " chosen because the poetic 
teachers who fixed our symbols saw that those wonderful 
blue eyes, surrounded by rays shining with the colour of 
light, were cast every year, and renewed again, and yet 
again ; possibly, too, because they saw the blind blue eye 
looked ever upwards to the heavens while it was trailed 
along the earth." 

In Fig. 285 (a papermark) the peacock evidently sym 
bolised the highest attainment of the glorified human soul, 
what the mystic would express as the 
height of Contemplation, the bliss of 
Union, or the attainment of Ecstasy. 
The supposed incorruptibility of pea 
cock's flesh led to this bird being 
occasionally considered as an emblem of 
the resurrection. But the more popular 
FM. z9iA.—initiai, symbol of resurrection was the phoenix, 

London, lyth century. ι · n ι ι ι 

mythically supposed to be reborn out 
of its own funeral pyre. The phoenix, says Mr. Wigston, 
was an allegorical bird of time signifying rebirth and 
resurrection out of its own ashes. It is shewn in 
Fig. 291. 

In the middle of Fig. 287 we have the St. Grail. In 
Fig. 291 we see it used as an initial letter, and in Fig. 292 
it forms the centre to a design obviously illustrating the 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

Romaunt of the Rose. Observe the "Orchard of Love 
peopled with novel plants." 

" Haut fut le mur et tous quarrte l'enceinte bénie." 

Fio. 29:.—Tailpiece. " Salmanticse," 1655. 

Figs. 293 and 294 shew modes of employing the Dove 
of the Holy Spirit as a symbol. In Fig. 295 we have the 

Fio. 293.—Headpiece. London, 1717. 

Fleur-de-lys ; in Fig. 296 the sacred Tau, and in Fig. 297 
the heart flaming with the love of charity, each emblem 
surrounded by a halo. 

 134 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

It will not have escaped the reader's notice that the symbols 
we are considering stretch in an unbroken chain from the 

Fio. 194.—Device. Antwerp, 1717. 

FIG. ZJ5·—Device. 
London, 1638. 

Fio. 196.—Initial. 
London, I7th century. 

Fio. ZJ7·—Device. 
London, 1640. 

Fio. Z9»,—Papermark. 
18th century. 

dark ages to modern Europe, and that the Reformation 
seems to have had little or no influence upon their employ 
ment. It is stated by historians that of the manifold 
heresies flourishing in the twilight of the Middle Ages, 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

some died of inanition, the others merged their identity 
in the great wave of the Reformation. The torch of 
Luther undoubtedly set ablaze many long smouldering fires, 
but the actions of the Lutheran leaders must quickly have 
undeceived the Albigensian Church had it cherished a 
supposition that the long-looked-for sunrise was at hand. 
Events quickly proved that far from liberating thought 
from the tyranny of Dogma, the Reformation was merely an 
exchange of gaolers, and that in many respects gaoler No. 2 
was as brutal and forbidding as gaoler No. i. Though 
Lutherism never produced a Torquemada, the atrocities of 
witch-hunting ran the Inquisition very close. The devilry 
that burnt Servetus was the same that murdered Huss, 
Bruno, Galileo and Vanini, and the annals of Protestantism 
are stained as red pro rata as those of Roman Catholicism. 
Lutherism has left its footprints all over England in the 
form of abbey ruins. With an unhallowed hand it made 
a clean sweep of imagery and symbolism, substituting in 
place of them the materialism that is recoiling with such 
deadly force upon the churches of to-day. The Reforma 
tion did indeed break one yoke, but merely to impose another. 
" We are obliged to confess," says Dr Beard, " that 
especially in Germany it soon parted company with free 
learning, that it turned its back upon culture, that it 
lost itself in a maze of arid theological controversy, that 
it held out no hand to awakening science." 

Far from " extending help " it did its utmost to stamp 
out all studies except those relating to its own dogmas. 
Luther went so far as to say that when once the Bible was 
in all men's hands, there would be an end of human book- 
writing: God's word would be enough. Fanatics were 
found to assert that Philosophy was an invention of the 

 136 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Devil, and that what approved itself to natural reason could 
not be theologically true. Beza, not satisfied with adminis 
tering the just judgments of God on the wicked " (i.e. those 
who ventured to dissent from the grim theology of Calvin), 
denounced liberty of conscience as " a diabolical dogma." 
Luther termed schoolmen " locusts, caterpillars, frogs, and 
lice." Reason he characterised as the " Arch Whore," and 
the " Devil's Bride " ; Aristotle was a " Prince of Dark 
ness," " horrid impostor," ** public and professed liar, beast 
and twice execrable." 

Hess was eager to dissuade Melancthon from teaching 
Greek which he contemptuously termed " a childish lecture," 
yet Hess had fears " lest we Germans should become more 
barbarous than ever we were by reason of the decline of 
Letters brought about by our Theology." This decline 
was so marked that the booksellers declared that, previous 
to the advent of Lutherism, they were able to sell 3000 
volumes in less time than was subsequently required to 
sell 600. 

Although Luther himself was an advocate for education, 
it is clear that there was only too much justification for the 
saying of Erasmus, " Wherever Lutherism reigns there good 
letters perish." 

In 1522 Melancthon alludes to the signal folly of those 
" who at the present day think that piety consists only in the 
contempt of all good letters, of all ancient erudition," and a 
little later we find him writing to a correspondent that 
unless he and men like him defend and foster letters, a 
Scythian barbarism or something worse must settle upon 
Germany. 

What was feared seems to have happened. "Listen 
to the Papists," says Luther, " the sole argument they use 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

137 

against us is that no good result has come of my doctrine. 
And in fact, scarce did I begin to preach my Gospel before 
the country burst into frightful revolt; schisms and sects 
tore the Church ; everywhere honesty, morality, and good 
order fell to ruin ; everyone thought to live independently 
and conduct himself after his own fancy and caprices and 
pleasure as though the reign of the Gospel drew with it 
the suppression of all law, right and discipline. Licence 
and all kinds of vice and turpitudes are carried in all con 
ditions to an extent they never were before. In those days 
there was some observance of duty, the people especially 
were decorous, but now like a wild horse without reign 
and bridle, without constraint or decency, they rush on the 
accomplishment of their grossest lusts." 

To the eyes of the judicious, the Reformation must 
therefore have appeared but a horrible abortion. In the 
darkness that surrounded them—as they themselves tell 
us—they languished like flies in winter. Quarles, our 
English emblem writer, well expresses the fears and aspira 
tions of his fellows; addressing Phosphorus, the Morning 
Star, he writes :— 

" Will't ne'er be morning ? Will that promised light 
Ne'er break, and clear those clouds of night ? 
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day, 

Whose conqu'ring ray 

May chase these fogs ; sweet Phosphor, bring the day. 
How long ! How long shall these benighted eyes 

Languish in shades, like feeble flies 
Expecting spring ? How long shall darkness soil 

The face of earth, and thus beguile 
Our souls of sprightful action ? When, when will day 

Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray 
May gild the weathercocks of our devotion, 
And give our unsoul'd souls new motion ? 

 Γ 3 

138 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day ; 

Thy light will fray 
These horrid mists ; sweet Phosphor, bring the day. 

Alas ! my light in vain expecting eyes 

Can find no objects, but what rise 
From this poor mortal blaze, a dying spark 

Of Vnlcan's forge, whose flames are dark, 
A dang'rous, dull blue-burning light, 

As melancholy as the night : 
Here's all the snns that glister in the sphere 

Of earth : Ah me ! what comforts here ? 
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day ; 

Haste, haste away 
Heav'n's loit'ring lamp ; sweet Phosphor, bring the day. 

Blow, Ignorance : O thon, whose idle knee 

Rocks earth into a lethargy, 
And with thy sooty fingers has benight 

The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite : 
Since thou hast puft our greater taper ; do 

Puff on, and out the lesser too} 
If e'er that breath-exiled flame return, 

Thou hast not blown, as it will burn : 
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day ; 

Light will repay 
The wrongs of night ; sweet Phosphor, bring the day." 

It is unnecessary to qualify this and succeeding quota 
tions from English poets. English and continental 
literature were so inextricably connected that—even after 
the disuse of Latin—they may be said to have formed an 
ideal Republic. " I am impressed," says Mr. Sidney Lee, 
" by the proofs I am accumulating of the closeness of the 
relations between Elizabethan literary effort and that of 
contemporary France and Italy; and of the community 
of literary taste and feeling, which almost rendered literary 
Europe at the end of the sixteenth century a single 
Commonwealth of Letters." 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

139 

For centuries the poets and philosophers had been at 
loggerheads with the clergy. The irreconcilable intensity 
of feeling may be judged from the words of Erasmus. 
" There is," he writes, " a wretched class of men of low 
degree, yet full of malice—not less dingy, nor less filthy, 
nor less vile than beetles, who, nevertheless, by a certain 
obstinate malignity of disposition though they can never 
do good to any mortal become frequently troublesome to 
the great. They frighten by their ugliness, they molest 
by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz 
round us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for us, so 
that it is often better to be on enmity with powerful men 
than to attack these beetles whom it is a disgrace ever to 
overcome and whom no one can either shake off or en 
counter without some pollution." In similar tone wrote 
Luther, " not a man but feels disgust when he sees or hears 
a clergyman approaching." Dr. Beard says that the monks 
unanimously called their opponents "the poets" and that 
the phrase became a term of contempt in clerical circles. 
He adds, "It was a hopeless struggle: not only the 
conflict of darkness with light, but between combatants 
on the one side stupidly and ludicrously ignorant, on the 
other equipped with the best learning of the age. . . . 
Argument was hardly possible: the poets despised the 
verbal subtleties of the scholastic theologians, while on 
the other hand the schoolmen blinked like owls in sun 
shine in the light of the new learning." 

But the philosophers, whose footprints we are tracking, 
were not content to sit down and wail their woes; they 
were desperately hard at work dissipating the horrid mists. 

Fig. 299 is an emblem of the Titanic struggle that 
was waged down the centuries by the thinkers so slyly 

 140 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and insidiously that only the results of their labours have 
hitherto been recognised or chronicled. 

The cock was, as we have seen, the awakener of sleep 
ing minds. In a letter to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford 
Giordano Bruno (at one period of his life a corrector of 
proofs for the press) styles himself, among other titles, 

Fio. »99.—Device. Antwerp, 1723. 

"The awakener of sleeping minds." But the cock was 
used also with a deeper symbolism. There is a Chinese 
legend that in the far away Happy Island of the Eastern 
Ocean is situated the Tree of Life. Upon the topmost 
branches sits a golden cock, whose function it is to awaken 
the glorious sun which (in dispelling darkness) is held to 
disperse the evil spirits of night. These spirits, so the 
Chinese think, abhor the truth of the Sun's light and shrink 
back into the darkness of Hell. When the golden cock 
begins his song ** all the cocks in the world are thus stirred 
up and begin to crow." 

It is clear that the Albigenses were acquainted inter 
alia with this legend, just as they were familiar with the 
Eastern idea that the Deity dwelt in the heart of a celestial 
rose. It is interesting, moreover, to find that our English 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 141 

poets were equally cognizant of the fable. In Hamlet 
Shakespeare says :— 

" The cock that is the trumpet to the morn 
Doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat 
Awake the God of Day." 

In Cornelia Kyd refers to :— 

" The cheerful cock, the sad nights comforter 
Waiting upon the rising of the Sun." 

Similar passages occur in the writings of Edmund 
Spenser, and George Peele. 

Milton in a sublime prayer on behalf of England 
writes : " Thou therefore, that sittest in light and glory 
unapproachable, Parent of Angels and men ; look upon this 
thy poor and almost spent and expiring land ; leave her not 
a prey to these importunate wolves, that wait and think 
long till they devour thy tender flock; these wild boars 
that have broken into the vineyard, and left the print of 
their polluting hoofs on the souls of Thy servants. O let 
them not bring about their vile designs, that stand now at 
the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword 
to open and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions, to 
re-involve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, 
where we shall never see the Sun of thy Truth again, never 
hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the Bird of 
Morning sing" 

Constant allusions to the Coming Sunrise are to be met 
with. We find the anonymous author of Fama Fraternità^ 
R.C. (1614-1616) writing: "Although now through the 
sorrowful fall into Sin this excellent jewel Wisdom hath 
been lost and mere darkness and ignorance is come into the 
world, yet notwithstanding . . . blessed Aurora will now 

 142 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

begin to appear who after the passing away of the dark 
night of Saturn ... is a forerunner of pleasant Phoebus 
who with her clear and glistening beams brings forth that 
blessed day long wished for of many . . . according to the 
doctrine of our forefathers, and ancient wise men." In an 
anonymous pamphlet entitled Confessio Fraternitatisy R. C. 
(1614) we find a similar prophecy of the Dawn for which 
so many were indefatigably working. " Now there remains 
that in a short and swiftly approaching time . . . the 
world shall have slept away the intoxication of her poisoned 
and stupefying chalice, and with an open heart, bare head, 
and naked feet, shall merrily and joyfully go forth to meet 
the Sun rising in the morning." The same anonymous 
writer " confesses " that " many high intelligences by their 
•writings will be a great furtherance unto this Reformation 
which is to come," and " sooner shall the stones rise up and 
offer their service than there shall be any want of executors 
of God's counsel." 

In Fig 299, then, we have an expressive emblem of 
Chanticleer ringing his midnight peal to entertain the 
Morn that is rising behind him. 

Before quitting this subject, it may be as well to point 
out as an instance of the cleavage between Poesy and 
Ecclesiasticism that—in England at any rate—the cock 
was regarded with disfavour by the Church as a sort of 
Devil's messenger from his crowing after Peter's denial. 
Throwing at cocks with a stick was a Shrove Tuesday pas 
time, which was enjoyed by many divines as a pious exercise. 
The mode in which the papermakers symbolised the spread 
of light is seen in Fig. 300, a spreading Fleur-de-lys budding 
in every direction. From the IS to be seen in Fig. 82, 
it is clear that the Fleur-de-lys symbolised Christ the Spirit 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

143 

and Light of the World shining amid the darkness that 
comprehended It not. The Fleur-de-lys was sacred to 

FIG. 300.—Papermark. 17th century. 

Lux ; thus we find it sometimes alluded to as the flower de 
Luce. It was the symbol par excellence of papermakers, 
and typified the mental light they were the means of spread- 

Fio. 301.—Papermark. lyth century. 

ing. It is a significant fact that the motto of the Waldenses 
of Piedmont was Lux lucet in tenebris—" The Light shines 
in darkness." 

In its attempt " to expel from the world all those things 
which darken human knowledge" the mystical church of 
the Holy Spirit had in hand a task in comparison with 
which the labours of Hercules were child's play. 

 144 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

It was perfectly well realised that ages must transpire 
before the harvest could be reaped, a knowledge that was 

Fio. 301.—Device. Paris, 1701. 

expressed by emblems such as Fig. 302. The palm is the 
slowest growing of trees, yet as the motto states : " In time 
it will bear fruit." Almost everywhere we find snails 
introduced implying " Slow but Sure." 
An Elizabethan poet writes :— 

" The slowest snail in time we see 
Doth creep and climb aloft" 

FIG. 303.—Tailpiece. 
Paris, 1650. 

FIG. 304. 
Papermark, 1478. 

FIG. 305.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1717. 

Fio. 306.—Initial. 
Geneva (?), i7th century. 

This policy of Slow but Sure was expressed by the motto 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

Festina Lente, " Make haste slowly." In Fig. 307 the anchor 
denotes slowness, the dolphin speed. " I can surely affirm," 
said Aldus, " that I have as my constant companions the 
dolphin and the anchor. I have accomplished much by 
holding fast and much by pressing on." This same idea was 
also conveyed by a crab and a butterfly. The author of 
Signes de nos Pensées (Paris 1717) says that a butterfly and 
a crayßsb indicated make haste slowly. The snail, the 
crayfish, and the crab were evidently interchangeable 
symbols expressive of the same idea. In Fig. 312 it will be 

FIG. 308. 

Papermark, 

1415. 

FIG. 307.—Device. Geneva, i6z8. 

seen that the artist has introduced the snail and butterfly 
among his flowers. The word matura, mature things, 
indicates that hastening slowly produces mature works. 
These workers consciously and deliberately laid great bases 
for eternity. 

We find the Albigensian maxim, ** To work is to pray," 

 ¡! 

146 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

modified into various forms, such as Plantin's "By labour and 
constancy" ; Fig. 313, " For thou shalt labour" ; Fig. 366, 

PRINTERS' DEVICES 

147 

FIG. 309.—Device. Ley den, 
1640. 

FIG. 310. 
Papermark, 1440. 

FIG. 311. 
Papermark, 1549. 

" Sow without doubting," and so forth. The love of peace 
and concord was inculcated by emblems such as Fig. 314," By 

FIG. 3IZ.—Tailpiece. London, 

peace, plenty—by wisdom, peace," "By concord small 
things become great," " Chantas," " Non Solus," and 
similar phrases. 

In Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers Green tells us 
that " the gallant ship courageously handled and with high 

f ^•"^qp φ ^^ytr -Jj φ **· ^*·* ^** ^*wì^ — * 
FIG. 313.—Device. London, 1683. Fio. 314.—Device. London, 1605 

FIG. 315.—Device. Amsterdam, 1726. 

soul of perseverance and fearlessness guided through adverse 
waves has for long ages been the type of brave men and 
brave women struggling against difficulties." 

In Fig. 318 we see this ship of man's soul steering hope 
fully for the City of the Sun. " Follow no man. There 
is nothing in the world of any value but the Divine light— 

 148 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

follow it." "I applaud your devotion to Philosophy," 
wrote Plotinus, A.D. 260 ; "I rejoice to hear that your soul 
has set sail, like the returning Ulysses for its native land 
—that glorious, that only real country—the world of unseen 
truth." 

FIG. 318.—Device. Cologne, 1751. 

In Figs. 316 and 317 we have the papermarks of two 
long-forgotten pilgrims—Ships that passed in the Night. 
"Of all who have sailed the seas of life, no men have 
experienced a range of vicissitude more wide than has 
fallen to the lot of some among the mystics. Theirs have 
been the dazzling heights; the lowest depths also have 
been theirs. Their solitary vessels have been swept into 
the frozen North, where the ice of a great despair has closed 
about them like the ribs of death, and through a long soul's 
winter they have lain hidden in cold and darkness, as some 
belated swallow in the cleft of a rock." 

Fio. 316.—Papermark. 
15th and i6th centuries. 

Fio. 317.—Papermark. 
15th and i6th centuries. 

CHAPTER X 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 

I HAVE in my possession a roughly classified collection of 
Head- and Tail-pieces, among which maybe seen many 
examples of prints of identical blocks, employed by 
" rival " printers. In these days it is a simple matter by the 
aid of the electrotype process to make manifold reproductions 
of any desired woodblock, but in olden times such methods 
were unknown. Stereotyping was invented in 1725, but 
the details being crude and the process new, there was 
much opposition, and it was not until the early part of the 
nineteenth century that it was generally adopted. Electro- 
typing was not introduced until 1836 or about that period. 
The Head-piece used over the dedication of Watss' 
translation of The Advancement of Learning, produced 
at Oxford in 1640, was used six years previously by a 
London printer as the Head-piece to Book IV. of Moses 
and Aaron. There is a blemish in each of the prints con 
clusively proving that both were impressions from the 
same block. How came it to be transferred from London 
to Oxford ? I have before me impressions from a block 
that was at Amsterdam in 1687, at Paris in 1697, and 
back again at the Hague in 1720. Similar instances of 
migration can be multiplied indefinitely. The 1720 
edition of Pope's Iliad, "printed by W. Hunter for 
Bernard Lintott," contains a very curious design, see 

149 

 150 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Fig. 348. In the previous year it was employed in Boer- 
haaves' Method of Studying Physick, " printed by H. P. 
for C. Rivington." 

If we compare the three folio editions of Shakespeare's 
Plays, we are confronted at once with further instances of 
the same problem. The first folio (1623) is "printed by 
Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount " ; the second (1632) is 
"printed by Thos. Cotes for Robert Allot"; the third 
(1664) is "printed for P. C." Thomas Cotes, the printer 
of the second folio uses at least eight blocks (including an 
initial letter) that were employed nine years previously by 
Jaggard. The printer of the third folio uses at least three 
blocks that were employed by Thomas Cotes thirty-two 
years earlier. A writer in The Library^ discussing an 
edition of a certain disputed work, observed recently, " But 
supposing for the sake of argument that some printer had 
wished to reprint the work, should we expect to find him 
in possession of exactly similar type to that used twenty 
or thirty years previously and of exactly the same initial 
letters, head-and tail-pieces and ornaments as those used 
by Wolfe in 1559 ? I think this highly improbable." 

It is a course wildly improbable, yet such transferences 
unquestionably took place, and the only theory that will 
satisfactorily explain the facts is either that printers were 
on the friendliest terms or that book ornaments were 
not the property of any particular printer, but were trans 
ferred by some association engaged in the propagation 
of knowledge. Whether either or both of these suggestions 
are correct does not affect the interest that per se the 
designs possess. 

In Fig. 319 we have the pelican of Self-sacrifice. 

In Fig. 320 we see the stag emblem of solitude, shyness, 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 151 

thirst for truth, and animosity towards serpents. The bat 
shewn in Fig. 321, according to Valerian, was the emblem 

PIG. 319.—Headpiece. Paris, 1675. 

FIG. 320.—Headpiece. Leyden, 1640. 

FIG. 321.—Headpiece. London, 1635. 

of "mutual offices," "justice," and "lucifuga" by which 
term we may understand that shyness of the light of 
publicity which was so extraordinary a characteristic of 
past publishing. I estimate the proportion of books issued 
anonymously must be quite 70 per cent. ; if we add those 
published modestly under the cover of pseudonyms or 
initials, we might say 80 per cent. ; and if to these were 
added posthumous publications, which for the first time 
saw the light of print many years after their alleged 

 152 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 153 

o 

cu 

TI 

s 

fa 

o, 

1 

 154 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

author's death, the figures would, I am convinced, be even 
more astonishing. 

In Figs. 322 and 323 we have a good example of another 
peculiarity of old bookmaking. Here the identical block 
has not been transferred from London to Madrid, but the 
design has been carefully and minutely copied. The 
fidelity of the detail, not merely in this particular instance, 
but also in many others, makes one surmise that "even 
unto the points and pricks here are to be found great 
mysteries." 

The bear so frequently to be seen sitting out the 
long winter of its discontent was, as already stated, the 
emblem of "hidden manners" (mores occulti} because of 
its hibernating and cave dwelling habits. The bear and 
the bat seem therefore to have conveyed similar ideas. 

To the same group we may probably add the squirrel 
and the rabbit. The timidity, fecundity, and burrowing 
habits of the rabbit rendered it a very apt symbol of its 
employers. 

The hound, as in Figs. 326,327 and 328, was the emblem 
of the pursuit of knowledge. According to Valerian, it 

FIG. 326.—Headpiece. London, 1721. 

meant philosophia communicata. Constant references to 
the pursuit and communication of knowledge are to be 
found in the literature of the period. It is a metaphor 
that was constantly employed by Francis Bacon. "Arts 

I 

•im V 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 155 

and Sciences," says he, "hunt after their works." In 
this " hunting and hounding of nature," this " hunt of Pan 
or learned experience," the " hunters after knowledge " hunt 
not for fame, but are "sagacious in hunting out works 
dealing with experiments." The editor of Campanula's 

FIG. 327.—Headpiece. Paris, 1605. 

FIG. 329. 
Papermark, 1385. 

FIG. 328.—Headline. London, 1634. 

works expresses the same sentiments. " We pursue," says 
he, ** the same ends seeing we tread the same footsteps in 
tracing and as it were hounding nature by sense and 
experience." Ben Jonson by a slight twist of the metaphor 
gives us that traditional combination of la bonté et la 

sagesse :— 

" Turn hunters then 
Again 

But not of men 
Follow His ample 
And just example. 

That hates all chase of malice and of blood 
And studies only ways of good 
To keep soft peace in breath. 
Men should not hunt mankind to death 
But strike the enemy of man ; 

Kill vices if you can 
They are your wildest beasts, 
And when they thickest fall you make the Gods true feasts." 

 156 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

A type of dog that figures very prominently in water 
mark, is the greyhound. A reference to this symbol is made 
several times by Dante, but his meaning is so obscure that 
commentators have been completely baffled. In Hell 
the poet refers to an allegorical monster ravenous and 
unruly that blocked his way and continued her accursed 
depredations :— 

" Until that greyhound come who shall destroy 
Her with sharp pain. He will not life support 
By earth or its base metals but by love 
Wisdom and Virtue . . . 
He with incessant chase, through every town 
Shall worry, until he to Hell at length 
Restore her, thence by Envy first let loose." 

Observe the aspect of worry and incessant chase in Figs. 331 
and 332, and observe too how these greyhound emblems 

FIG. 330.—Papermark, 1380. 

FIG. 331.—Papermark, 1363. 

FIG. 332.—Papermark, 1440. 

FIG. 333.—Papermark, 1414. 

are all distinguished by the little bell signifying "acute 
preaching." In Purgatory Dante refers again to this 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 157 

subject, this time characterising the hell-born monster 
as a " Wolf"—the wolf being a customary synonym for 
the tyranny of the Court of Rome— 

" Accurst be thou 

Inveterate wolf ! whose gorge ingluts more prey 
Than every beast beside, yet is not fill'd 
So bottomless thy maw !—Ye spheres of Heaven ! 
. . . When is the day 
Of his appearing, for whom Fate reserves 
To chase her hence ? " 

Mr. Edmund A. Gardner, commenting upon this passage, 
observes that this prophecy of the Veltro or greyhound, the 

FIG. 334.—Papermark, 1387. 

FIG. 335.—Papermark, 1477. 

Coming Deliverer, is one of the insoluble problems of the 
Divina Commedia. The earliest commentators did not 
recognise any specific individual under this imagery, but 
supposed the prophecy to refer either to the second coming 
of Christ or to the advent of some heroic personage 
(preferably an Emperor or a Pope), who should renovate 
the world and bring back the golden age. The millennium 
was, as we know, the ever-present dream of the mystics, 
and the appearance of these belled watermarks is presump 
tive evidence that the greyhound that was eventually to 

 158 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

destroy the monster Ignorance was nothing more or less 
than an emblem of persistent and energetic education. 

From hunting it is merely a step to Pan the God of 
Hunters. The great god Pan is figured in a variety of 
forms, and we find him appearing in tail-pieces, head-pieces 
and initials. It was a reproach cast constantly at the poets 
and philosophers that they were Pantheists, i.e. that they 
regarded Nature as Divine, and every human soul as a 
germ of God. Aroux charges Dante with Pantheism. 
Paracelsus, Bruno, Vanini, and Spinoza were outspoken 
pantheists, and the mystic philosophy of Jacob Böhme is 
permeated with the same system of thought. The 
Alchemists were pantheists. They characterised man as a 
microcosm or world in miniature made in the image of 
God—the Macrocosm or greater universe. 

It is unnecessary to digress into a discussion on 
Pantheism. Briefly it may be described as the antithesis of 
Atheism. The Mystics refused to circumscribe their ideas 
of the Unknowable within the limits of a human form. 
They never maintained that everything ivas God, but 
recognised books in the running brooks, sermons in stones 
and Go(o)d in everything. 

Everywhere in the maze of Nature they discernée! the 
varied expression of one all-embracing and eternal Life or 
Power. 

" Before beginning, and without an end 

As space eternal and as surety sure 
Is fixed a Power Divine which moves to good 

Only its laws endure. 

Out of the dark it wrought the heart of man 
Out of dull shells the pheasants pencilled neck 

Ever at toil it brings to loveliness, 
All ancient wrath and wreck." 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 159 

FIG. 336.—Headpiece, 1674. 

Fio. 337.—Initial. Cambridge, 1641. 

Fio. 338.—Initial. i6th century (?). 

Fio. 339.—Headpiece. Paris, 17* century. 

FIG. 340.—Tailpiece. 
Leyden, 1638. 

Fio. 341.—Tailpiece. 
Paris, 1605. 

FIG. 342.—Tailpiece. 
Paris, 1717. 

 160 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

FIG. 343.—Tailpiece. i6th and i7th centuries. 

FIG. 344.—Tailpiece. i6th and I7th centuries. 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 161 

The heretics, as we have already seen, were charged 
with cherishing the arrogant and impious notion that man's 
soul might be developed into a god—its dross refined and 
its baser metals transmuted into gold. This was indeed the 
idea of the pantheists. 

" Each hath such lordship as the loftiest ones, 

Nay, for with Powers above, around, below, 
As with all flesh and whatsoever lives 
Act maketh joy and woe. 

Higher than Indras ye may lift your lot 
And sink it lower than the worm or gnat, 

The end of many myriad lives is this 
The end of myriads that." 

The word Pantheism was not employed until 1707, 
but the ideas underlying the fable of Pan " the noblest of 
antiquity" are as ancient as recorded thought. Not only 
were they symbolised by the figure of Pan, but we find them 
expressed under the symbol of Artemis. 

FIG. 345.—Headpiece. Geneva, 1634. 

In Fig. 345 we see the spotless one, the intrepid and 
unwearied huntress, setting forth upon her quest. Among 
the Arcadians Artemis was worshipped with the symbol of 
a bear ; the boar sent by her is said to have been ** a 
symbol of the awakening every spring of the hunting 
season after the sleep of winter." 

The boar emblem of the coming Dawn is shewn here 
with in the form of papermark and printer's headline. The 

 ï62 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Greek Artemis is identical with the Roman Dianai and 
the Egyptian Isis. Although a spotless virgin, she is also 

Fio. 346.—Papermark, 1491. 

Fio. 347.—Headline. London, 1738. 

represented as the many-breasted personification of the 
fructifying powers of Nature. In Fig. 349 we see her thus, 

Flo. 349.—Tailpiece. Leyden, 1688. 

with the horns of the new moon upon her forehead—& 
bright and imperial crest implying the divine flower of 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 163 

the future and the dawn of more genuine truth. The 
numberless false dawns which were hailed by the poets 

FIG. 348.—Headpiece. London, 1710. 

and philosophers never deterred them from keeping open 
wide in expectation the eastward windows of their souls. 
Jacob Bohme's first work was characteristically entitled : 
** Aurora the Day-spring, or Dawning of the Day in the 
East or Morning Redness in the Rising of the Sun " 
(1575-1624). 

We have seen how passionately Dante and Giordano 
Bruno hailed their mystic saint Sophia. Richard de Bury 
in his Philibiblon tells us that the love of books is the same 
thing as the love of wisdom. He continues : " Now this 
love is called by the Greek word Philosophy, the whole 
virtue of which no created intelligence can comprehend ; 
for she is believed to be the mother of all good things." 
In the headpieces herewith, we have this idea expressed by 
the cornucopias, and in the baskets of fruit and flowers 
springing from the Virgin's head. 

The Italian philosopher Vanini had his tongue torn out 
and his body burnt at the stake for his noxious heresies. 
Among other evidence put in against him, was the alleged 
impiety that he had dared to style Nature " the Queen of 
the Universe." Owen in his Sceptics of the Italian Re 
naissance tells us that Vanini in his fervent passion was 

 i64 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

" half inclined to deify Nature." He adds': " Her cultus 
was the only instrument of freedom for thinking men that 

FIG. 350.—Tailpiece. Paris, lyth century. 

FIG. 351.—Headpiece. London, 1605. 

could be opposed to the degrading superstitions of the time. 
He shared with Bruno the Lucretian conviction that 
the Divine mission of nature was to emancipate men from 
the thraldom of sacerdotalism and religious tyranny. His 
Dialogues were an attempt to inculcate this truth." 

But there was really nothing either new or heretical in 
this widespread cult of the Virgin Sophia. " If a man 
commit himself unto her," say Ecclesiasticus, "he shall 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 165 

inherit her, and his generation shall hold her in possession. 
For at the first she will walk with him by crooked ways, 
and bring fear and dread upon him and torment him with 
her discipline until she may trust his soul and try him by 
her laws. Then will she return the straight way unto him 
and comfort him, and shew him her secrets. But if he go 
wrong she will forsake him, and give him over, to his own 

rum. 

Referring to this same divinity Solomon says : " I 
loved her and sought her out from my youth ; I desired to 
make her my spouse, and I was a lover of her beauty." 

We have here the key that unlocks nearly all the 
mysterious love poetry of the Middle Ages. When we 
find Petrarch sonneteering in his extreme old age apparently 
to a married woman whose husband was then living, do we 
not observe the incongruity, especially when he likens 
his lady to no less a Being than the Son of God ? 

Chaucer, the friend of Wycliffe and intimate of 
contemporary Italian scholars, in a poem to his really 
nameless lady, has used, in order to designate her purity, 
the figurative French name Blanche ; whereupon editors 
have gravely concluded that he was referring to the wife 
of John of Gaunt, whose name, it appears, was Blanche ! 

Commentators who have endeavoured, more or less in 
vain, to identify the Beatrices, Lauras, Cynthias, Phyllises, 
Phcebes, Ideas, Licias, and Elizabeths of the sonneteers 
may be referred to the Troubadour Hugo de Brunet. 
" If I be asked," says he, " to whom my songs are 
addressed, I keep it a secret. I pretend to such a one, but 
it is nothing of the kind" The divine object of all this 
seemingly erotic literature was the elusive, wayward, 
exacting, bitter-sweet, and many-sided mistress whose 

 l 

i66 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

essence was expressed in that inscription of Isis : " I am all 
that hath been, is, or shall be ; and no mortal has lifted 
my veil." 

If anyone doubt that the Beatrice who conducted 
Dante into the heart of the Celestial Rose was aught else 
than the spirit of truth, let him turn to that enigma, the 
Vita Nuova. We are there told that " Beatrice " was nine 
years of age when Dante first met her. He remarks: 

** Many times the number nine hath appeared among the 
preceding words whereby it appeareth that it is not without 
reason." He then says that he will assign the reason " why 
this number was so friendly to her," and explains that 
three being the root of nine Beatrice was accompanied by 
the number nine to give to understand that she was a nine, 
that is a miracle whose root is the wondrous Trinity alone. 
Then he gives us permission to speculate a little by adding : 

** Perchance a more subtle person might see in it a yet 
more subtle reason." 

Now the number Nine is equivalent to the Hebrew 
word for Truth. It is unnecessary to enter here into the 
Kabbalistic system known as gcmantrta, by means of 
which numbers represented -words. It is sufficient to point 
out that the Hebrew word for Truth comes from a root 
signifying strength—that which could not be moved. The 
letters of the word are equivalent to the mysterious number 
nine. When multiplied that figure invariably gives figures 
so true to each other that when added together they again 
prove the figure nine : thus twice nine are eighteen, thrice 
nine are twenty-seven, and so on. 

Among our Elizabethan sonneteers—notably Spenser 
and Drayton—we find a similar word playing upon the 
number nine. 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 167 

One of the lesser known Elizabethans—Richard Smith 
—dedicates his sonnet sequence Diana "Unto Her Majesties 
Sacred Honourable Maids." It is obvious that it was not 
the Mary Fittons or the Bessie Throckmortons of the 
period who were in the poet's mind, for in his Dedication 
he leads off :— 

" Eternal Twins that conquer Death and Time 
Perpetual advocates in Heaven and Earth, 
Fair, chaste, immaculate and all divine, 
Glorious alone before the first man's birth." 

Passages such as this must surely, to say the least of it, 
arouse some disquietude in the mind of the merely 
materialistic critic ? It is probable that much of the poetic 
adulation of Queen Elizabeth was lavished with a mental 
reservation in favour of a less material mistress, was, in 
fact, religious ecstasy towards that mystic Elizabeth of 
whom we catch a glimpse in Spenser. 

" The third my Love, my life's last ornament, 
By whom my spirit out of dust was raised, 
To speak her praise and glory excellent 
Of all alive most worthy to be praised. 
Ye three Elizabeths for ever live 
That three such graces did unto me give." 

Elizabeth, or Elsbeth, is presumably akin to Beth-el, 
and that as we are told, is " none other than the House of 
God." Some interpret the name as signifying " one who 
worships God." It is noteworthy that the last syllable of 
Titurel, the leader of the Grail Knights, was derived from 
his mystic mother Elizabel. Tannhaüser was redeemed by 
an Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tudor has, I feel certain, no more 
interest in much of the poetry assumed to have been 
addressed to her than she has in the New Jerusalem of 

 168 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the Apocalypse. The Virgin Queen who ruled over the 
hearts of the poets was their Alma Mater the Spotless 
Artemis. The Fortunate Islands where she held sway 
were not Great Britain and Ireland, but that happy island 
in a faraway ocean which we recognise as El Dorado 
or Utopia, or Arcadia, or the City of the Sun, or The Neiv 
Atlantis, or Nova Solyma, or Avalon, or The Garden of 
the Sages, or The Land of Roses. Here is an account of 
that Island translated by Gary from the seventeenth century 
French of Heriot de Borderie :— 

" There is an isle 

Full, as they say, of good things ;—fruits and trees 
And pleasant verdure ; a very master-piece 
Of nature's ; where the men immortally 
Live, following all delights and pleasures. There 
Is not, nor ever hath been, Winter's cold 
Or Summer's heat, the season still the same,— 
One gracious Spring, where all, e'en those worst used 
By fortune, are content. Earth willingly 
Pours out her blessing : the words " thine " and " mine " 
Are not known 'mongst them : all is common, free 
From pain and jealous grudging. Reason rules, 
Not fantasy : every one knows well 
What he would ask of other : every one 
What to command : thus everyone hath that 
Which he doth ask ; what is commanded, does. 
This island hath the name of Fortunate ; 
And, as they tell, is governed by a Queen 
Well-spoken and discreet, and therewithal 
So beautiful, that, with one single beam 
Of her great beauty, all the country round 
Is rendered shining. When she sees arrive 
(As there are many so exceeding curious 
They have no fear of danger 'fore their eyes) 
Those who come suing to her, and aspire 
After the happiness which she to each 
Doth promise in her city, she doth make 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 169 

The strangers come together j and forthwith, 

Ere she consenteth to retain them there, 

Sends for a certain season all to sleep. 

When they have slept so much as there is need, 

Then wake they them again, and summon them 

Into her presence. There awaits them not 

Excuse or caution ; speech however bland, 

Or importunity of cries. Each bears 

That on his forehead written visibly, 

Whereof he hath been dreaming. They whose dreams 

Have been of birds and hounds, are straight dismissed ; 

And at her royal mandate led away, 

To dwell thenceforward with such beasts as these. 

He who hath dreamed of sconces broken, war, 

And turmoil, and sedition, glory won, 

And highest feats achieved, is, in like guise, 

An exile from her court ; whilst one whose brow 

Is pale, and dead, and withered, showing care 

Of pelf and riches, she no less denies 

To be his queen and mistress. None, in brief, 

Reserves she of thé dreamers in her isle, 

Save him, that, when awakened he returns, 

Betrayeth tokens that of her rare beauty 

His dreams have been. So great delight hath she 

In being and in seeming beautiful, 

Such dreamer is right welcome to her isle. 

All this is held a fable : but who first 
Made and recited it hath, in this fable, 
Shadowed a Truth." 

To return to our woodblocks. In Fig. 349 two birds 
may be seen pecking at fruit. These are evidently the 
Alchemist's " Doves of Diana." What was implied by the 
phrase I do not know, but the emblem was extremely 
popular. The " Peace and Plenty " inscribed on Fig. 313 
may possibly have been its meaning. Flowers and foliage 
all have their special significations, but it is unnecessary to go 

 170 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

into them in detail. The plant that looks like a Love 
Lies Bleeding, is the fabulous amaranth of the poets, and 

Fro. 35Z.—Tailpiece. 
Paris, 1718. 

Fio. 353.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1716. 

Fio. 354.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1716. 

Fio. 355.—Tailpiece. 
Londou, 1717. 

was the emblem of immortality. "Three kinds of most 
beautiful flowers," says one of the Alchemists, " are to be 
sought and may be found in the Garden of the Wise: 
damask coloured violets [Love?], the milk white Lily 
[purity ?], and the immortal amaranthus. Not far from the 
fountain at the entrance, fresh Violets do first salute three 
which being watered by streams from the great golden 
river, put on the most delicate colour of the dark sapphire ; 
the Sun will give thee signs. Thou must not sever such 
precious flowers from their root until thou makest the Stone ; 
but the fresh ones cropped off have more juice and tincture ; 
and then pick them carefully with a gentle and discreet 
hand ; if fates frown not, they will easily follow, and one 
flower being plucked, the other golden one will not be 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 171 

wanting. Let the Lily and the Amaranth succeed with 
greater care and labour." 

FIG. 356.—Tailpiece. Paris, 17* century. 

The birds of paradise in Figs. 357, 324 and 325 are 
probably like the peacock, emblems of the Holy Spirit. 
This then newly-discovered bird was alleged by travellers to 

FIG. 357.—Headpiece. London, 1683. 

have no legs, but to live perpetually in the ωχ feeding upon 
dew. 

The dolphin was the Arms of the Province of 

 Il H 

172 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 173 

o 
•o 
e 

o 
£ 

 174 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Dauphiny where there were more Waldenses gathered 
than in the whole of Europe elsewhere. The origin of 
the emblem I do not know. Combined with an anchor 
it denoted Make Haste Slowly, but this emblem is also 
said to denote a seaport or the sea. I surmise that what 
it originally denoted was the spiritual sea—i.e. the all- 
cleansing and infinite Spirit. 

Hanging inconspicuously in the centres of Figs. 358 to 
362 will be observed a bunch of Fish. In his Clef de la 
Comédie Anticatholique de Dante Alighieri, Aroux states 
that Fish were regarded as "a celestial sign, symbolic of 
the profound discretion recommended in the Mysteries." 
The real work of the world has almost invariably been 
accomplished by non-advertising men. " To the silent He 
sendeth his Angels to hold speech with them, but the 
babblers He driveth into the wilderness." 

The serpent by reason of sloughing its skin, was 
regarded as the emblem of regeneration. It was also the 
symbol of Healing and of Immortality. It encircles the 
image of most of the ancient sanitary and hygienic gods, 
and in the Egyptian Mysteries the cup of Health was 
entwined by Serpents. Observe how in Fig. 363 the symbol 
is twisted into a double S, and how in Fig. 365 the artist 
has introduced a third S so as to form the acclamations 
Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus, in both cases associating the Holy 
Spirit with its healing influence. Fig. 363 forms a veritable 
treatise in Philosophy. Note the lamps of traditional 
knowledge, the crab and butterfly, the amaranth, the 
dolphin, the olive branches, and the two pillars of Will 
and Understanding. 

The two cherubs I do not understand; they are 
perhaps the Eternal Twins to which Richard Smith refers. 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 175 

The figure in the centre is obviously Philosophy. " Awake, 
my harp," says the psalmist, and the stringed instrument 

FIG. 363.—Headpiece. London, 1649. 

upon which Philosophy is playing is evidently the human 

soul. 

The Theorbos on the left and right had the same 
meaning, vide Francis Quarles, who writes in Emblems 
Divine and Moral:— 

" Rouse thee, my soul, and drain thee from the dregs 
Of vulgar thoughts ; screw up the heightened pegs 
Of thy sublime Theorbo four notes higher, 
And high'r yet, that so the shrill-mouth'd choir 
Of swift-winged seraphims may come and join, 
And make the concert more than half divine." 

The two figures playing upon the Theorbos probably 
denote Poesy and Music, those two handmaidens by whose 
help Philosophy " may more sweetly insinuate itself." 

"The Philosopher," says Philip Sidney, "teacheth, 
but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can 
understand him; that is to say he teacheth them that are 
already taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest 
stomach; the poet is indeed the right popular philo 
sopher . . . He beginneth not with obscure definitions 

 ι ;6 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

which must blur the margin with interpretations and load 
the memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with 

Fio. 364.—Initial. London, lytli century. 

words set in delightful proportion either accompanied with 
or prepared for the well enchanting skill of Music ; and 
with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you with a tale 
which holdeth children from play and old men from the 
chimney corner, and pretending no more doth intend the 
winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue ; even as 
the child is often brought to like most wholesome things 
by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste." 

After deploring the poor esteem in which Poetry was 
held by his contemporaries, Sidney continues : " They that 
with quiet judgments, will look a little deeper into it, 
shall find the end and working of it such as being rightly 
applied deserveth not to be scourged out of the Church 
of God." 

Now the Church of the Holy Spirit did not scourge 
out Poesy; on the contrary, Poesy and Song were main 
methods by which it worked. The Troubadours—and we 
must include among these the Trouvères, the Minnesingers, 
the Skalds, and the various other forms that the calling 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 177 

assumed in the different parts of Europe—were the greatest 
swayers of men's minds the world has ever seen. As the 
Troubadours died out, the stage gradually assumed their 
functions: the actors and dramatists of the seventeenth 
century were the inheritors of the Jester traditions of the 
earlier period. Motley comments upon the enormous 
influence exercised by the fifteenth, sixteenth and 
seventeenth century dramatic associations known as 
Guilds of Rhetoric. Those popular clubs for the manu 
facture of poetry and the drama, shared with the pulpit 
the only power which then existed of moving the passions 
or directing the opinions of the people. They were, says 
Motley, eminently liberal in their tendencies. The authors 
and actors were mostly artisans and tradesmen " belonging 
to the class out of which proceeded the early victims (of the 
Inquisition) and the later soldiers of the Reformation." 
Their bold farces and truculent satires were influential in 
spreading among the people a detestation of Ecclesiastical 
abuses. Every effort was made to suppress these "per 
ambulating dramas," but without success. "There was 
at that time," wrote a correspondent of Sir Thomas 
Gresham, "syche playes (of Reteryke) played that hath 
cost many a 1,000 men's lyves, for in these playes was the 
Word of God first opened in thys country. Weche playes 
were and are forbidden moche more strictly than any of 
the bookes of Martin Luther." At times the Rhetoricians 
were employed as mouthpieces by greater minds. We find 
Philip of Spain being notified that a particularly biting 
satire came from the pen of one Renard " although for the 
sake of deception the Rhetoric comedian had been employed." 
The anonymous author of The Arte of English Poesy 
(Puttenham ?) observes that theatres were built in the form 

M 

 178 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

of a musical bow thus -—- the auditorium answering to the 
wood, and the stage to the catgut. Speaking of the theatre, 
Bacon says that it was carefully watched by the ancients 
that it might improve mankind in virtue ; " indeed," he 
adds, " many "wise men have thought it to the mind as the 
bo-w to theßddle" 

It is therefore, I think, reasonable to assume that the 
means by which Philosophy, Poesy and Music are in Fig. 
363 drawing melody from men's souls, and playing upon 
the human mind, is the poetic drama of which the true 
authorship has formed so fertile a field of inquiry. 
Shakespeare himself was the greatest of the world's 
Troubadours. "Invest me in my motley," says he. 
" Give me leave, and I will through and through cleanse 
the foul body of the infected world." 

" In serious jest and jesting seriousness," says Marston, 
" I strive to scourge polluting beastliness." 

" There has been more by us in some one play laughed 
into wit and virtue," says the author of The Muses' Looking 
Glassy "than hath been by twenty tedious lectures," a 
sentiment endorsed by Massinger, who claims that :— 

" Actors may put in for as large a share 
As all the sects of the philosophers. 
They with cold precepts, perhaps seldom read 
Deliver what an honourable thing 
The Active virtue is. But does that fire 
The blood, or swell the veins with emulation 
To be both good and great, equal to that 
Which is presented on our theatres ? " 

Geo. Peele utters the aspiration :— 

" Then help Divine Adonai to conduct 
Upon the wings of my well-tempered verse 
The hearers' minds above the towers of Heaven." 

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODBLOCKS 179 

Massinger in truly Albigensian vein writes : " Prosper 
thou Great Existence my endeavours (as they religiously are 
undertaken and distant equally from servile gain." 

I have analysed elsewhere the Elizabethan Drama and 
its educational purpose.1 It is instructive to note that 
in many cases the same pious book ornaments were 
used on playbooks as on the Holy Bible, no distinction 
being maintained between works sacred or profane.2 Fig. 
281, for instance, may be seen in the first folio of Ben 
Jonson's Works^ and the doxology Deo Óptimo Máximo is 
to be found at the end of Marston's plays. 

The Goats seen in Fig. 365 were the emblems of Tragedy, 
a word derived from the goat skins worn by actors. " High 
and excellent Tragedy," says Sidney, " openeth the greatest 
wounds and sheweth forth the ulcers that are covered with 
tissue." It " maketh Kings fear to be tyrants and tyrants 
to manifest their tyrannical humours." He continues : 
"I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read 
this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the 
Nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of 
poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as 
though they -were next inheritors to fools : no more to 
jest at the reverend title of 'a rhymer'; but to be 
lieve, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers 
of the Grecian's divinity; to believe, with Bembus, that 

1 The Shakespeare Symphony, Chapman and Hall, Ltd. 

2 Herein they anticipated Mr Harold Beghie's recent proposition that there is 
no auch thing as secular education : " A man who has found joy in learning knows 
that every good book is religious, and would not exclude from the Infinity of his 
Maker a theory of Euclid or a page in Biology. He knows that learning has an 
altar ; every fresh fact he gathers to his brain is a swelling chord in the canticle of 
his soul's pleasure ; and every advance he makes in knowledge is a nearer approach to 
the Holy of Holies ; his religion is Truth and his ritual is research. He uses 
learning as an avenue of approach to the God of Truth." 

 τ · 

i8o NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

they were the first bringers in of all civility; to believe, 
with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner 
make an honest man than the reading of Virgil ; to believe, 
with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased 
the heavenly deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil 
of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philo 
sophy natural and moral, and 'quid non?'—to believe, 
with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry 
which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits 
it should be abused." 

FIG. 365.—Tailpiece. Geneva, 1618. 

CHAPTER XI 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

THERE remains for consideration a further form of 
printer's ornament known technically as " flowers." 
These diminutive designs were frequently set up in 
rows at the commencement of a new chapter, section or 
division. In 1771 a standard writer on the art of printing 
deplored that even then " flowers " were falling into disuse, 
owing to workmen being insufficiently paid for their "painful 
application." 

When we examine the early specimens of printers' 
flowers, it is evident they are as pregnant with interest as 
are watermarks and woodblocks. 

One of the most ancient "flower" ornaments is the 
acorn as shown in Fig. 369. This form is so admirable as a 
design that it is still in frequent use by modern printers. 
We have already seen that the acorn was employed as a 
watermark (p. 83), and the suggestion has been offered 
that it symbolised slow growing strength. We have also 
seen that the early printers were persistent and indomitable 
sowers. They went forth mourning and carrying their 
precious seed, leaving their sheaves as a heritage to the 
future. " It is enough for me," said a typical philosopher, 
" that I have sowen unto posterity, and the Immortal God." 
Some idea of the amount of sowing that took place 
may be formed by the knowledge that within less than 

ιβι 

 ΙΙΙΙΊ 

182 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

fifty years from its invention, 40,000 works in editions of 
500 copies, or nearly 20,000,000 volumes, were scattered 
from the printing press. 

Speaking of the rise of printing, Motley observes that 
at the very epoch when tyranny was most swiftly ripening 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

183 

FIG. 366.—Device. Basle, 1738. 

a weapon was secretly being forged more potent in the 
great struggle for freedom than any that the wit or hand 
of man had ever devised or wielded. " The contest," he 
continues, *' was at first favourable to the cause of arbitrary 
power ; but little seeds were silently germinating, which in 
the progress of their development were one day to under 
mine the foundations of Tyranny, and to overshadow the 
world." 

FIG. 367.—Cambridge, 1720. 

Fio. 368.—Cambridge, 1720. 

The early printers were quick to foresee this 
momentous issue of their art, and it is therefore not due 

to chance that we find the acorn, that silent and slowly 
germinating little seed, scattered all over their pages. They 

Fio. 369. — London, 1617. 

Fio. 370. — London, 1656. 

Fio. 371.—London, 1656. 

were strewers of sweetness and Light, and almost as frequent 
as the acorn is the fieur-de-lys, the emblem of light, the light 
flower, the flower de luce, the oriflamme, the golden flame. 

Fio. 371.—Papermark. 
17th century. 

Fio. 373.—Paris, 164.7. 

Fio. 374.—London, 1644. 

375 to 3^3 represent different forms of St. Grail, 
from which will be seen springing sometimes the fleur-de-lys, 
sometimes the golden flame, sometimes the Lily of purity, 
and sometimes the rose. 

 184 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

The ultimate Holy Vessel is, as we have said, the 
purified heart of man, and if Figs. 380 and 383 be examined 
under a magnifier, it will be seen that the bodies of the 

FIG. 375.—London, lyth century 

FIG. 376.—London, 1655. 

FIG. 377.—London, 1709. 

FIG. 378.—London, 1709. 

FIG. 379.—London, 1709. 

vases are in reality small hearts. It will also be seen that 
hearts (sometimes flaming with the love of charity) form the 
centres to Figs. 369, 393 and 3943. In Fig. 384 they appear 
as a tailpiece. The forms of old printers' "flowers" are 
so many and diverse, that it is impossible to do justice 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

185 

to them within the short limits of a chapter. I therefore 
reproduce no more than a few representative examples. 

FIG. 380.—Oxford, 1641. 

s*» 

FIG. 381.—Ibid, (enlarged to twice its natural size). 

FIG. 38».—London, 1674. 

FIG. 383.—London, 1711. 

Fio. 384.—Tailpiece. 
London, 1719. 

Fio. 385.—Compolite 
" Flower » Tailpiece. 
Pari·, 1769. 

The S. S. of the Sanctus Spiritus will be seen on most 
of the St. Grails in the form of handles. It also occurs 
alone, as in Fig. 386. 

 186 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

In Fig. 387 we have the "vines of Engadi "; in Fig. 389 
the trefoil, in Fig. 390 angel amoretti, and in Fig. 391 the 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

FIG. 386.—Paris, 1713. 

Fra. 387.—Pari«, 1680. 

Fio. 388.—Paris, 1680. 

***** tt* *tt*t*t*tt**tt*œt* **** 

FIG. 389· — London, 17*3· 

Fio. 390.—Paris, 17x1. 

Fra. 390A.—Parie, 1717. 

FIG. 391. — London, 1716. 

flaming sun. In Fig. 392 we have a row of churches (the 
Church of the Holy Grail ?), and in Fig. 393 a design 
which looks as though it might represent the three Mounts, 

187 

a favourite emblem among the paper-makers. It is probable 
that many of these complicated flowers were something 
more than purposeless designs, but I am unwilling to 
weaken the case by putting forward mere speculations. 

In many of these flower illustrations will be observed 
curious irregularities. The technical law of printers' flowers 

FIG. 393.—London, 1658. 

φ 

&¿64<M)Cn*MMM6rfCn»b¿2W>C>¿<K>t»> 
:]ιφφφφφφφφφ·φφφφ 

FIG. 394.—London, 1658. 

FIG. 394Λ.—London, 1658. 

is that they shall be regular. Luckombe writes : " The 
use of flowers is not confined to ornaments over head pages 
only, but they serve also, each sort by itself^ upon several 
other occasions." He goes on to say, " Flowers being cast 
to the usual bodies of letters their size should be proportion 
able to the face of the characters : since it would be as 
wrong to use great primer flowers with long primer letters, 
as it is improper to embolden the look of great primer by 

i i 

 i88 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

long primer flowers." In my illustrations it will be 
observed that almost every law of regularity has been 

Fios. 395, 396, and 397. — London, 17*1. 

Fios. 398 and 399.— London (?), i7th century. 

Fio. 400. — Paris, 1687. 

EX COLLECTIONS. ANT. AUGUSTINI, 

ARCHIEPISCOPl T ARR A CO N E NSIS, 

NOMINA OMNIUM PONTIFICUM 

ROMANORUM. 

FIGS. 401 and 402.—Cologne, i68z. 

outraged. Note how upright bars and stops of various 
kinds have been interpolated ; observe how here and there 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

189 

flowers are inserted upside down, or endways. In Fig. 405 
they are seen wandering perpendicularly up the side of a 

θΛ?-/*9»· «-Λ"-/., , 

«aóàsò-waXi 

Fio. 403.—London, 1705. 

Fio. 404.—London, 1721. 

FIG. 405.—Headpiece. London, 1716. 

Fio. 406.—Tailpiece. Parie, 1692. 

woodblock, and in Fig. 406 a flower and four colons have 
been inserted into a hollow space in the centre of a 
tailpiece. 

The obvious and superficial explanation to these various 

 ico NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

peculiarities is "carelessness," but I can realise the con 
temptuous and grim smile with which the shades of certain 
old printers would greet this suggestion. "It would," 
says Luckombe, "be generous in gentlemen to examine 
the circumstances that may have occasioned an error before 
they pronounce it a typographical one." 

Frankly, I do not believe these flower irregularities are 
due in any respect to errors, but that, on the contrary, they 
are indications of, and clues to, secret matter concealed in 
the text by various systems of cipher. In some cases 
" flowers " probably constitute a cipher in themselves. Figs. 
395, 396, and 397, which are typical of forty or fifty rows 
from the same volume, are too conspicuously different to 
be due to printers' errors. Figs. 368 and 369 are from a 
magnificent work in three volumes printed in 1720 at the 
University Press of Cambridge. The present representatives 
of this body would, I am convinced, repudiate with 
contempt the suggestion that their predecessors ran short 
of type, and therefore interpolated notes of interrogation. 
The early printers were proverbially very painstaking. 
They frequently stopped the machining of a work in order 
to correct typographical errors. The artistic probity of 
Plantin impelled him to submit the proofs of his books to 
strangers with the offer of a reward for errors indicated, 
and the Etiennes adopted the same system. Yet notwith 
standing this traditional carefulness, one is puzzled at the 
frequent appearance of what is at first sight the most 
palpable carelessness ; such, for example, as mispagination, 
mixture of types, woodblocks printed upside down, and 
inexplicable italicisation of unimportant words and phrases. 

The suggestion that these varied peculiarities are evidence 
not of slovenliness or paucity of type, but that early printed 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

191 

books were largely employed as vehicles for cipher, is not 
so fanciful as to many it may at first appear. The early 
printers were not only themselves learned, but they 
surrounded themselves with men whose minds shone out 
like stars in comparison with the surrounding darkness. 
Among this school cipher writing was regarded as a fine 
art. Few realise what an extraordinary mass of Cipher 
literature arose in the sixteenth century. Those who are 
interested in the archselogical side of the subject may refer 
to the writings of Palatino (1540), Bellaso (1553), or 
Glanburg (1560). The unjaded appetite may next enjoy 
a short course of Porta, Trithemius, Cardanus, Walchius, 
Bibliander, Schottus, Selenus, Hugo, Niveron, Caspi, 
Tridenci, Comiers, La Fin, Dalgarno, Buxtorff, Wolfgang 
and Falconer. Even then it is open to the curious to 
browse upon Eidel, Soro, Amman, Breitkampt, Conradus, 
De Baines, Lucatello, Kircher, and not a few others. The 
extent of this literature proves that the subject interested a 
far wider public than the restricted circle of statesmen and 
diplomatists. Hitchcock expresses his conviction that 
among the writings of the Alchemists a vast mass of 
unexplored cipher literature is awaiting discovery. Gabriele 
Rossetti in his Disquisitions on the Anti-Papal Spirit 
which produced the Reformation ; its secret influence on 
the literature of Europe in General and of Italy in 
particular (i 834), is equally emphatic. " I have wandered," 
says he, " through the vast field of my country's literature, 
and have explored the many gardens which adorn it. I 
saw that they were redolent not only of flowers delightful 
to the eye, but of sweet and nutritious fruits. I discovered 
that treasures beyond all price were buried under the 
enchanted ground whereon I was treading, and I beheld 

 192 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

the muses there presiding over all that is most recondite in 
philosophy, mysterious in politics, and inaccessible in mystic 
theology." 

** How often and perseveringly," he continues, ** has 
the midnight lamp been trimmed by the learned inquirer in 
his eagerness to decipher and explain the hieroglyphics of 
the Egyptian School ! ... Under our own eyes lie 
monuments of hieroglyphic figures, not less valuable because 
entire, but passed coldly by, unprized because unknown. 
Were they but rightly interpreted, we should behold a new 
world rising before HS, a world containing things not 
belonging to men of other manners or other climes, but to 
ourselves ; things most important and useful, which would 
reveal to us the undiscovered causes of many a great effect, 
and assure us of the truth of the following arguments " :— 

** The greater number of those literary productions which 
we have hitherto been in the habit of considering in the 
light of amusing trifles, or amatory rhymes, or as wild 
visions of the romantic, or heavy treatises by the dull 
scholar, are in reality works which enclose recondite 
doctrines and secret rites, an inheritance bequeathed by 
remote ages ; and, what may to many appear mere fantastic 
fables, are a series of historical facts expressed in ciphers 
which preserve the remembrance of the secret actions of our 
fathers." 

** The obscurity which not unfrequently involves these 
works was studiously and purposely contrived ; and if it 
have never yet been cleared away (and Dante's Commedia 
is the first proof of this) no blame should be attributed to 
those who might have dispersed it : the difficulties of the 
time, and the dangers which encompassed them, were 
sufficient to deter them from so doing. The most learned 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 193 

men and authors of various ages and countries were pupils 
of this mysterious school, and never losing sight of their 
one grand object, they were constantly on the alert to bring 
persons of talent and genius to their way of thinking, and 
to render them co-operators in their bold projects. There 
can be no doubt that the present state of civilisation in 
Europe is in a great measure an effect of this school . . . 
which worked to free mankind from the tyranny of priest 
hood as well as from monarchical despotism." 

If, as is strongly to be suspected, the flower 
irregularities indicated are indeed outward and visible 
signs of inward invisible ciphers, it would prove that 
the mediaeval sages followed the ancient precedent of 
Pythagoras. We are told that when the disciples of this 
philosopher were capable of receiving his secret instructions, 
they were taught the use of ciphers and hieroglyphic 
writing; that they could correspond with each other from 
the most distant regions in unknown characters ; and that 
by signs and words which they had received they could 
discover those who had been educated in the Pythagorean 
school. 

It is practically a certainty that some similar system 
existed among the scattered and persecuted Albigenses. 
It is known that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1834), the 
founder of a sect of Illuminati who set themselves "to 
combat ignorance, superstition and tyranny,*' adopted a 
numerical cipher. Weishaupt's cipher was obviously an 
adaptation of the Kabbalistic system of Gemantria^ whereby 
numbers represented letters and words, and by means of 
which abstruse problems were promulgated. 

But I am convinced that the philosophers in their 
employment of cipher were actuated by a motive deeper 

N 

 ι , 

194 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

than the convenience of being able to echo to one another 
from their cells. "What road," asks Paracelsus, "should 
the philosophers follow ? " and he answers : " That exactly 
which was followed by the great Architect of the Universe 
in the creation of the world." 

"We neither dedicate nor raise a capítol or pyramid 
to the pride of man," says the author of the Novum 
Organimi) " but rear a holy Temple in his mind on the 
model of the Universe, "which modely therefore^ we imitate" 
The Instaurarlo Magna is divided into six partitions 
corresponding to the six days of creation. It was, I am 
persuaded, the aim of the sages to "woorke as God 
woorkes," and their publications were as far as possible 
modelled upon their favourite simile the Book of Nature. 

Robert Boyle, one of the earliest members of the Royal 
Society, comments upon the fact that " the Book of Nature 
is to an ordinary gazer and a naturalist like a rare book 
of hieroglyphics to a child and a philosopher. The one 
is sufficiently pleased with the oddness and variety of the 
curious pictures that adorn it, whereas the other is not 
only delighted with those outward objects, that gratifie his 
sense, but receives a much higher satisfaction in admiring 
the knowledge of the author, and in finding out and en 
riching himself with those abstruse and veiled truths 
dexterously hinted in them." 

The time is, I trust, coming when bibliographers will 
tire of being sufficiently pleased with the odd "trade 
marks " to be found in old volumes, and will pursue those 
dexterously veiled hieroglyphics* to their truer issues. 

"A booke," says an unknown writer, "is an un- 
wrought lump of metall. You see not th' rich shine of 
it beneath sundry thin coats that obscure it." Just as the 

TRICKS OF OBSCURITY 

195 

Book of God contains within its protecting shell a kernel 
of more spiritual truth, so, I think it will be found, do 
many of the productions of the Albigensian philosophers. 

It will be remembered that a favourite motto was 
"Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be 
increased." The complete verse from Daniel (chap, xii., 
v. 4) runs : " But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words^ and 
seal the book even to the time of the end. Many shall run," 
etc. It is possible that we have here a mystical motive 
for concealing or closing up words by a system of ciphers. 

Whether or not coherent sentences lie concealed, it 
cannot be questioned that words and names were frequently 
buried under the protective veils of anagrams, etc. To 
the modern mind anagrams are savourless, but for many 
centuries they were deemed to be intellectual salt, and 
were sometimes regarded with a mystic veneration. " Not 
withstanding the sour sort of critics," says Camden in his 
Remaines Concerning Britaine, "good anagrams yield a 
delightful comfort and pleasant motion in honest minds." 
How high a place anagrams held in men's estimation may 
be measured by the fact that Louis XIII. appointed a 
Provençal to be his royal anagrammatist, and granted him 
a salary of 12,000 livres. 

Not only was anagrammatising an essential Provençal 
art, but it was one of the branches of the Kabbalah known 
as Ί'hemura. Roger Bacon published the constituents of 
gunpowder under the veil of an anagram, and in a similar 
manner Galileo announced his discovery that Venus had 
phases like the moon. The reputed author "James 
Hasolle" is found on scrutiny to resolve into "Elias 
Ashmole"—"the greatest virtuoso and curioso that was 
ever known or read of in England before his time." 

 196 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

The three first editions of Camden's Remaines were 
published anonymously, yet the learned author secreted his 
name within them under the phrases D um illa evincam and 
Nil malum cui Deaì both of which mottoes will be found to 
be perfect anagrams of " William Camden" 

" The Glory of God," says Bacon, " is to conceal a thing, 
but the glory of the king is to find it out ; as if according 
to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took 
delight to hide his works to the end to have them found 
out ; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than 
to be God's playfellow in that game." 

It is a fascinating study to watch these intellectual 
giants at play. 

CHAPTER XII 

THE RENAISSANCE 

OF past literary phases, one which the modern mind 
is least able to comprehend, is the obscurity and 
cautiousness of mediaeval authors. Everywhere 
more or less do we find the inculcation of what superficially 
appears to be mere selfish reticence. Especially was this 
conspicuous among the Alchemistical Philosophers. 

" Be thou in a place secret, by thyself alone 
That no man see or hear what thou shalt say or done, 
Trust not thy friend too much wheresoe'er thou go 
For he thou trustest best sometyme may be thy foe." 

Norton cautions the reader to let no one know of his 
undertakings but his good angel and himself. 

" When man disputed of colours of the rose. 
He would not speak, but kept himself full close." 

In order that one may better appreciate the perils 
surrounding the colours of the rose (i.e. the various shades of 
heretical opinion ?) it is desirable here to set down a brief 
abstract of the conditions amid which the sages worked. 
There were no inducements to publish knowledge : on the 
contrary, excellent reasons against doing so. 

It is not within my scope to discuss the horrors of 
religious persecution except so far as they affect the sup 
pression of learning. Unhappily, it has ever been those 
who have laboured most zealously to instruct humanity that 

 198 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

have most suffered from its brutishness. The thirteenth 
century crusade against the Albigenses though nominally 
directed against Heresy, was in effect an effort on the part 
of Bigotry to stamp out a civilisation that it neither 
understood nor tolerated. De Montfort and the rabble by 
which the Romish Church accomplished its design, were 
absolved from sins from the time of their baptism to the 
present. They were also absolved from the payment of all 
debts even though they had sworn to pay them. 

Happily, it is difficult for us moderns to realise the 
conditions of mediaeval existence. The official Church was 
a source whence flowed not truth and purity, but a steady 
stream of corruption. Of this the evidence is to be found 
not in the invectives of her enemies, but among the writings 
of her most gifted sons. Gerson himself declares " The 
Court of Rome has invented a thousand Church services to 
make money, but few indeed have been made for the sake 
of virtue only. We hear much from morning to night in 
that Court of armies and lands and towns and money, but 
we seldom or never hear of chastity, justice, fidelity and 
morality ; so that that court which was formerly spiritual, 
has now become worldly, devilish, tyrannical and worse 
than any secular one." 

Men beheld criminal wars carried on by means of 
unblushing simony. It was taught that an error in doctrine 
was more offensive to God than a crime. The blatant 
impudence of the traffic in absolutions exceeds belief. 
Every crime " even to the rape of God's mother if that 
were possible " had its authorised tariff payable at Rome. 
Thus poisoning was absolved for eleven ducats and six livres 
tournois. Incest was priced at thirty-six livres and three 
ducats. Perjury at seven livres, three carlines. Murder (if 

THE RENAISSANCE 

199 

not by poison) was less expensive. For one ducat, four 
livres, eight carlines a son might purchase the privilege of 
parricide, and so through the whole calendar of crimes. 

Outside the pale of this so-called " Church " was certain 
and eternal damnation. For centuries the axiom Extra 
ecclesìam nulla salus was the source of unutterable woe to 
humanity. The custodians of Christianity unhesitatingly 
burnt their fellow-men in the persuasion that better a few 
temporal pangs than the eternal anguish of Hell fire. The 
end justified the means, and no means howsoever appalling 
were neglected that might force back into the fold the 
misguided members of those " new, reprobate and damnable 
sects " which proceeding from their father the foul fiend 
had spread like a leprosy over the face of Europe. 

Among the first and last victims of the Inquisition were 
those " accursed vermin " the Albigenses. The Bull of 
Pope Innocent VIII., granted in 1487 for the extirpation of 
the Waldenses, exhibits no solicitude for the heretic, but 
rather a fear lest the true believer should be smutted by 
contact. The inquisitor " no doubt endued with learning 
and fervent zeal for the salvation of souls " is enjoined to 
exterminate and disperse " certain sons of iniquity, followers 
of that abominable and pernicious sect of malignant men 
who are called the poor people of Lyons or the Waldenses," 
He is to tread these venomous adders under foot, all their 
moveable and unmoveable goods may be lawfully seized and 
given away by anybody whatsoever, and those who assist 
in the pious work are granted plenary indulgence and 
remission of all sins. 

The Inquisition's roll of victims will, of course, never 
be accurately gauged. In the brief eighteen years of 
Torquemada's administration 10,220 individuals were 

 200 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

burned alive, and 97,321 punished with infamy, confiscation 
of property or perpetual imprisonment. What was implied 
by infamy may be gathered from the following formula— 
a priestly anathema held ever in readiness to blast the 
troublesome and perverse: "In the name of the Father, 
the Son, the Holy Ghost, the blessed Virgin Mary, John 
the Baptist, Peter and Paul, and all other Saints in Heaven, 
do we curse and cut off from our Communion him who 
has thus rebelled against us. May the curse strike him in 
his house, barn, bed, field, path, city, castle. May he be 
cursed in battle, accursed in praying, in speaking, in silence, 
in eating, in drinking, in sleeping. May he be accursed in 
his taste, hearing, smell, and all his senses. May the curse 
blast his eyes, head, and his body, from his crown to the 
souls of his feet. I conjure you, Devil, and all your imps, 
that you take no rest till you have brought him to eternal 
shame ; till he is destroyed by drowning or hanging, till he 
is torn to pieces by wild beasts, or consumed by fire. Let 
his children become orphans, his wife a widow. I 
command you, Devil, and all your imps, that even as I now 
blow out these torches, you do immediately extinguish the 
light of his eyes. So be it—so be it ; Amen. Amen." 
The records of the Dark Ages are grim, but those of 
modern Europe run them close. In 1561 occurred the 
butchery of St Bartholomew's Eve. " I agree to the 
scheme," cried Charles IX., provided not one Huguenot be 
left alive in France to reproach me with the deed." The 
news of the portentous crime was received at Rome with 
a joy beyond description. A medal was struck to 
commemorate the event, and the Pope accompanied by his 
Cardinals rendered a solemn fe Deum for this crowning 
mercy vouchsafed to the Church. 

THE RENAISSANCE 

201 

But the aspirations of Rome were still unsatisfied. In 
1568 the Holy Office condemned every man, woman, and 
child of the heretical Netherlands to the scaffold. From 
this universal doom involving three millions of innocent 
and industrious people only a few persons specially named 
were exempt. "The sooner these noxious plants are 
extirpated from the earth," wrote Philip II., " the less fear 
there is that a fresh crop will spring up." " I desire, " he 
continued, in his instructions to Alva, " that if you have 
not already disembarrassed the world of them you will do 
it immediately, and inform me thereof, for I see no reason 
why it should be delayed." 

The efforts made by Roman Catholicism to disembarrass 
the world of its most intellectual and industrious 
citizens, would be inconceivable were they not indubitably 
attested. The storms burst with traditional violence 
upon the Waldenses in 1655 and again in 1686. 
Men, women and children were massacred by methods so 
horrible that the foulest imagination cannot compass their 
reality. " If all the tyrants of all times and ages were alive 
again," exclaimed Cromwell's envoy to the Duke of Savoy, 
" certainly they would be ashamed when they should find 
that they had contrived nothing in comparison with these 
things that might be reputed barbarous and inhuman. In 
the meantime the angels are surprised with horror, men 
are amazed, Heaven itself seems to be astonished with the 
cries of dying men, and the very earth to blush with the 
gore blood of so many innocent persons." 

In 1815 Dr Gilly, an English traveller, visited the 
Waldensian valleys which for upwards of 700 years had 
been haunted by the terrors of persecution. He narrates 
an interesting conversation with an aged Waldensian 

 202 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

pastor. " Remember," said this old man with conscious 
and becoming pride, " remember that you are indebted to 
us for your emancipation from Papal thraldom. We led 
the way. We stood in the front rank and against us the 
first thunderbolts of Rome were fulminated. The baying 
of the bloodhounds of the Inquisition was heard in our 
valleys before you knew its name. They hunted down 
some of our ancestors and pursued others from glen to glen 
and over rock and mountain, till they obliged them to take 
refuge in foreign countries." 

Inns were forbidden to receive heretical guests. It was 
illegal for schools to admit children, almshouses paupers, 
and graveyards dead bodies unless furnished with satisfactory 
proofs of orthodoxy. - Births, deaths, and marriages could 
only occur with validity under the segis of the Catholic 
Church. As far as Ecclesiasticism could exclude him the 
heretic was outside the pale of humanity. 

The Inquisition was defined by the biographer of that 
baneful monarch Philip II. as a " heavenly remedy, a 
guardian angel of Paradise, a lion's den in which Daniel and 
other .just men could sustain no injury, but in which 
perverse sjnners were torn to pieces." In reality it was the 
most demoniacal engine ever evolved from Hell. It taught 
the natives of South America to shudder at the name of 
Christianity. The fear of it froze the greater part of 
Europe into a seeming orthodoxy. It was an organisation 
whose acts were above all law or question. Its methods 
were reduced to a horrible simplicity—arrest on suspicion, 
torture, death. It condemned not deeds but thoughts. Its 
spies and familiars lurked unsuspected, and its tentacles 
extended into every man's household. The merest straws 
were construed into crimes ; on the word of some ignoble 

THE RENAISSANCE 

203 

informer suspects were at any moment liable to be dragged 
from their homes and hurried without trial into the maw of 
the Holy office, whence they rarely emerged. 

But the aspect of persecution that mainly concerns us, 
is Authority's attitude towards Knowledge. The monks 
were inveterate destroyers of books. They were in 
defatigable in erasing the works of ancient authors in order 
to transcribe upon the obliterated vellum their own fabulous 
productions. Pope Gregory VII. burnt the priceless 
library of the Palatine Apollo in order that the attention of 
the clergy might be confined to the Holy Scriptures. In 
1569 12,000 copies of the 'Talmud were burnt publicly at 
Cremona. Cornelius Agrippa was compelled to fly, merely 
for having displayed a few elementary philosophical experi 
ments. He was regarded as an object of such horror that 
the people fled, leaving the streets empty at his approach. 

The writings of Roger Bacon were so effectually 
suppressed by his superiors that they were not printed 
until 1733. Poesy was held to be the inspiration of the 
devil. One of the Dominicans was notorious for perse 
cuting all verse makers whose powers he attributed to 
heresy and magic. 

Whatever may have been the original excellences of 
the Romish system, it is undeniable that at the period 
immediately prior to the Reformation it had become a base 
and merciless tyranny over the conscience and freedom 
of Europe. The clergy were men of fierce passions and 
low instincts. They were justly regarded as fanatical 
obscurantists whose energies were devoted not to the 
advancement of morality and learning, but to the perpetua 
tion of a benighted ignorance and an almost inconceivable 
bigotry. At their hands Philosophy and Theology had 

 204 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

become degraded and brutalised to a degree almost impos 
sible to credit. 

The sledge hammer of Luther, notwithstanding that it 
nearly caused the disintegration of the Romish Church, 
brought, as we have seen, little if any relief to the claims of 
philosophy. The human mind knows nothing of sudden 
changes or violent jumps and the conditions of modern 
Europe differed little from those of the Dark Ages. What 
ever may have been the points of discord between Lutherism 
and Rome, both parties were united in their persecution of 
philosophy. The Jesuits sent to proscribe Lutherism from 
Bohemia, converted that flourishing kingdom into a desert. 
They struck one fatal blow by condemning and destroying 
the entire national literature. Similarly on the other hand, 
we find our English Puritans making great bonfires of 
everything Popish, and piously glorying in their depreda 
tions. The Reformation, therefore, did little to free thought 
and odium tbeologicum remained an ever present incubus. 

Francis I. signed Letters Patent for the suppression of 
printing. In 1624 an edict was promulgated in Paris 
which forbade any attack on the System of Aristotle under 
pain of death. The philosopher Ramus, for traversing 
some of Aristotle's dicta, was cited as an enemy of religion, 
a disturber of the public peace, and a corruptor of the 
minds of youth. 

Copernicus (1473-1543) waited thirty years before he 
dared make public his discovery that the sun was the centre 
of our universe. Happily he died a few hours after the 
publication of his book, hence this "upstart astrologer," 
this " fool who wishes to reverse the entire science of 
astronomy "—these were Luther's terms—escaped the 
deathly clutch of the Inquisition. For espousing the 

THE RENAISSANCE 

205 

heresy of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno was burned in 1600. 
On hearing his doom, he uttered the memorable words, 
" You have greater fear in pronouncing this sentence than 
I have in receiving it." Vanini (1585-1619) on being led 
forth from his prison to the hurdle for execution exclaimed : 
"Let us go, let us go joyfully to die as becomes a 
philosopher." Before being burned, his tongue was torn 
out. In the words of an unsympathising onlooker 
" Vanini was ordered to put forth his sacrilegious tongue 
for the knife. He refused: it was necessary to employ 
pincers to draw it forth, and when the execution's instrument 
seized and cut it off, never was heard a more horrible cry. 
One might have thought that he heard the bellowing of an 
ox which was being slaughtered." There is fitness in thus 
allowing bigotry to record in its own terms its own doings. 
For declaring that the earth revolved, Galileo was 
martyred in 1642. "Are these then my judges?" he 
exclaimed, on retiring from the Inquisitors whose ignorance 
astonished him. The priest who perused the posthumous 
manuscripts of this great philosopher, destroyed such as 
in his judgment were not fit to be known to the world. 

Descartes (1596-1650) was horribly persecuted in 
Holland. He was accused of Atheism and narrowly 
escaped being burned on an eminence favourably situated 
for observation by the Seven Provinces. 

Such being the average fate of Europe's intellectual 
giants, what was the lot of the smaller luminaries, the 
nonentities of whom History takes no account ? They fell 
like the unnumbered leaves in an autumn gale. 

The efforts of Rome to disembarrass the world of its 
thinkers, naturally were felt most heavily by authors, 
printers, and booksellers. For the slightest infraction, real 

 2o6 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

or supposed, of religious or political propriety, the stationer 
suffered. The fate of one Bartholomew Hector—a poor 
glowworm whose name I am happy to recover from 
oblivion—was probably typical of a thousand others equally 
grim. Hector was a stationer and was burned for some 
unknown reason in 1555. He "died with admirable 
constancy, and edified the assistants and standers-by in 
such manner that he drew tears from their eyes." 

The efforts of authority having failed to extinguish 
printing, there remained the expedient of muzzling. Clerical 
inquisitors were appointed at Madrid, Rome, Naples, Lisbon, 
and elsewhere. License to publish was refused to all works 
except those certified under the official Imprimatur as being 
innocuous. Unhappily, the ecclesiastical sages who sat in 
inquisition were frequently in vigorous disagreement among 
themselves. Some had a keener sense of heresy than others. 
The chief Inquisitor of the Netherlands lived to see his own 
writings proscribed by the Licenser at Rome, and the 
Inquisitor at Naples was so displeased with the Spanish 
Index that he maintained it had never been printed at 
Madrid. There was no concord among the Inquisitors, 
and the incrimination of one was followed by the retaliation 
of another. The Bishop of Saltzburg having asserted the 
existence of the Antipodes was declared a heretic by the 
Archbishop of Mentz. The books on cipher writing of 
Abbot Trithemius were condemned to the fire as works 
"full of diabolical mysteries." An ambiguous sentence, 
or even a word was sometimes sufficient to damn or 
indefinitely delay publications. 

Two lists of condemned writings were compiled. The 
simple Index set forth those books that were never under 
any circumstances to be opened. The Index Expurgatorius 

THE RENAISSANCE 

207 

indicated works that might be perused after they have 
undergone a purification by the removal of obnoxious 
passages. "Expurgation" caused louder complaints than 
out and out prohibition, as by the omission or interpolation 
of passages, writers were made to say or unsay exactly 
what the Inquisitors wished. As Milton complained, the 
system " raked through the entrails of many an old good 
author with a violation worse than any could be offered 

to his tomb." 

The ineptitudes of the Licensers were incredible. 
Malebranche was unable to get an approbation for his 
Research after Truth^ because the Inquisitors were unable 
to understand it. It was eventually approved as a work 
on Geometry. A book on Trigonometry was condemned 
as heretical because the Trinity, a forbidden subject of 
discussion, was assumed to be included in Trigonometry. 
A treatise on the "Destruction of Insects" was believed 
to be a covert allusion to the Jesuits, and was accordingly 
disallowed. 

Nani's History of Venice was permitted because it 
"contained nothing against princes" Raleigh's History 
of the World was condemned for being " too saucy in 
censuring the acts of Kings." 

James I. proscribed Buchanan's Historyi and everyone 
was ordered to bring his copy " to be perusit and purgit 
of the offensive and extraordinäre materis." In free 
England, literature was equally afflicted. The function 
of Church and State seems to have been to pounce down 
at every possible opportunity, and the rare chance seems to 
have been for a writer to escape their grip. Unseen snares 
lay around not only religion and politics, but almost every 
conceivable subject, and nothing was allowed to be 

 t 

2o8 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

published that could by any possibility injure the 
interests of anybody powerful enough to retaliate. The 
censorious attitude of the authorities caused professional 
"informers" to spring into existence. The malicious 
activity of this class was a constant menace to authors. 
The simplest expressions were construed as bearing sinister 
meanings. "Let me but name bread," complains Nash, 
"and they will interpret it to be the town of Breda in 
the Low Countreys." 

These " decipherers " as they were called, made it their 
trade to interpret names as disguises for great personages 
thereby libelled. No interpretation seems to have been 
too far-fetched to involve the writer in trouble. The 
phrase from Piers Penniles\—"I pray you, how might 
I call you ? " was interpreted into a covert attack by Nash 
upon one of themselves whose name happened to be 
" Howe." Nicholas Breton did not exaggerate when he 
wrote :— 

" Who doth not find it by experience 
That points and commas oftentimes misread 
Endanger oft the harmless writer's head." 

The punishments inflicted upon writers unable to prove 
their innocence were shameful in their severity. If suspects 
refused to confess the order ran : " You shall by authority 
hereof put them to torture in Bridewell, and by the 
extremity thereof . . . draw them to discover their 
knowledge." The rack and the scavenger's daughter were 
used for the torturing of Alexander Briant to extort con 
fession about a secret printing press. 

The dangers of authorship were so great and the 
rewards of literature so remote, that it is not surprising 
to meet with the enquiry, "who is likely to have any 

THE RENAISSANCE 

209 

courage to study ? seeinge insteede of honour and preference 
dishonour and hindrance recompensed for a reward of 
learning." 

To those capable of judging the state of the human 
species, Thought was Pain. As Sismondi says most men 
in France, Germany, England, and Spain who felt them 
selves to be endued with the capability of forming ideas 
"either smothered them, not to aggravate the pain of 
thoughts, or directed them solely in speculations the farthest 
from real life." 

The Advancement of Learning brought no honour to 
Bacon from his own countrymen. It was cashiered as an 
heretical and impertinent piece, and was placed on the 
Index Librorum Prohibit or urn. Bishop Goodman said 
that he would have written some reply to it if he " durst 
have printed it." It is unnecessary to give a list of 
English writers who suffered from the baneful effects of 
Government repression as such a scroll would include the 
names of practically all our great writers until the con 
cluding years of the seventeenth century. 

The illegality of unorthodox books continued on the 
Continent for many years later. Any study trenching 
upon the domain of dogma entailed very perilous risks. 

The anatomist Vesalè was doomed to a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem for the expiation of his impiety of prying into 
the secrets of the human body, and his works were burnt. 
Monsieur de Laragnais was imprisoned for having read a 
paper in favour of inoculation before an assembly of the 
Academy in Paris. His vain defence was that by his 
advocacy he hoped to preserve to France the lives of 
fifty thousand persons who died annually of smallpox. The 
Faculty of Theology in Paris burnt the books of the 

 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

geologists, banished their authors and compelled the 
naturalist Bufibn to retract as "contrary to the creed of 
the Church " the heretical assertion that mountains and 
valleys had been produced by the action of the sea. 

Voltaire among other projects for benefitting France, 
wished to make known to his countrymen the discoveries 
of Newton, but the authorities interposed and forbad it. 
In Spain even until 1788 if not later, the despotism of the 
Universities prohibited Newton and modern philosophy. 
The Encyclopaedia designed by Diderot to summarise 
all branches of science and art, was first discouraged and 
afterwards prohibited by the French Government. 

Similar instances might be indefinitely multiplied, and if 
such were the conditions centuries after the so-called Renais 
sance, what must they have been before that event ? What 
precisely are we to understand by the term Renaissance ? It 
is defined by J. A. Symonds as having been a com 
prehensive movement of the European intellect and will 
towards self-emancipation and towards reassertion of the 
natural rights of reason and the senses." * To fix a definite 
date for the beginning, the development, or the consumma 
tion of the movement is impossible although the term is 
generally understood to mark the transition from the swamp 
of mediaeval ignorance to the comparative joyousness of 
the last three centuries. How comes it that what was 
admittedly a revolt against the barren dogmatism of 
Theology has been designated by a term so essentially re 
ligious as " Renaissance " or Re-Birth ? According to John 
Addington Symonds it is a word that has " recently " 
come into use. The New English Dictionary assigns its 

1 I have italicised these words to point the analogy between this definition and 
the pillar emblems illustrated on pp. 107 and 108. 

THE RENAISSANCE 

211 

first appearance as an English term to the years 1840 or 
1845, but I imagine that in France and Italy the expres 
sion is of much older standing. Indeed, I fancy that it 
was given to the movement by the men who themselves 
were making it. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould states that the 
initiation into the mysteries of the St. Grail " was regarded 
as a NEW BIRTH, and those who had once become members 
were regarded as elect, regenerate, separate from the rest of 
mankind, who lay in darkness and ignorance." 

Jacob Böhme the mystic cobbler leads off in Chapter I 
of De Mysterio Magno with the words : " If we would 
understand what the NEW BIRTH is and how it is brought 
to pass, then we must first know what Man is." 

The judicious Hitchcock, who derived his opinions 
from the study of upwards of 200 works on Alchemy, 
sums up his conclusions as to the Alchemist's real object by 
saying he could liken it to nothing more expressive than 
the experience known in religion as The NEW BIRTH. 

Wise men under the masks of Poesy, Mysticism, and 
Alchemy were thus for centuries working out the regenera 
tion of Europe. These scientists of the Soul by the quiet 
force of perseverance gradually and imperceptibly trans 
formed the jungle of the human heart into a garden of the 
rose; to a great extent they succeeded in their unseen 
efforts to transmute the clay of humanity into worthier 
elements. The Renaissance was not the inevitable clash of 
the human spirit growing unconsciously into conflict with the 
rigid and outworn Theology of Rome. There are many 
countries in Europe to-day whose condition negatives the 
notion that such a struggle was in any sense ** inevitable." 
No : the Renaissance or re-birth of humanity was the effect 
of a scheme deliberately designed and artistically contrived 

 212 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

by the prophetic and more nobly gifted minds of past ages. 
It was not an untended wild flower, but rather a plant rare 
and exotic, cherished by centuries of blood and tears. 
" They wish," cried an opponent of the Inquisition, " that 
we should meet these hungry wolves with remonstrances, 
using gentle words while they are burning and cutting of 
heads. Be it so then. Let us take the pen^ let them take 
the sword. For them deeds, for us words. We shall weep, 
they will laugh. The Lord be praised for all ; but I 
cannot write this without tears." 

In this pathetic utterance of 300 years ago, is expressed 
the spirit that had even then existed, suffered, and achieved 
for a previous five centuries; probably much longer. 
" For the last 450 years," declared a writer in 1624, " there 
have been (especially in Europe) a great number in diverse 
kingdoms and countries which have made profession of a 
religion altogether conformable to the Word of God . . . 
having mourned under the darkness of Antichrist wherein 
they shined like precious stones in a dunghill, and roses 
among the thorns. They seemed to the world but as 
abject men, but God beheld them as His Children, and 
gave them eyes to see and ears to hear, and a heart to 
understand the Truth." " It is wonderful," continues this 
same writer, " that they saw so clearly in those times of 
darkness more gross than that of Egypt." 

Gradually and almost imperceptibly, the Light of 
the Renaissance crept up and spread over the face of 

Europe : 

" Lo ! in the East 

Flamed the first fires of beauteons day, poured forth 
Through fleeting folds of Night's black drapery. 
High in the widening blue the herald-star 
Faded to paler silver as there shot 

THE RENAISSANCE 

Brighter and brightest bars of rosy gleam 

Across the grey. Far off the shadowy hills 

Saw the great Sun, before the world was 'ware, 

And donned their crowns of crimson ; flower by flower 

Felt the warm breath of Morn and 'gan unfold 

Their tender lids. Over the spangled grass 

Swept the swift footsteps of the lovely Light 

Turning the tears of night to joyous gems, 

Decking the earth with radiance, 'broidering 

The sinking storm-clouds with a golden fringe. 

Yea ! and so holy was the influence 
Of that high Dawn which came with victory 
That, far and near, in homes of men there spread 
An unknown peace. The slayer hid his knife ; 
The robber laid his plunder back -, the schroff 
Counted full tale of coins ; all evil hearts 
Grew gentle, kind hearts gentler, as the balm 
Of that divinest Daybreak lightened Earth." 

213 

FIG. 407.—Tailpiece. Geneva, 1776. 

 CONCLUSION 

THE facts now outlined represent the result of some 
ten years' research. I should hesitate to commit 
them to print were it not that each new source of 
information serves but to verify and expand my conclusions. 
The area of inquiry has been wide ; indeed, so wide that 
the specialist in every subject may feel inclined to dub me 

** uneducated." Unhappily, one cannot cover more than a 
certain amount of reading within a given compass; I can 
only wish that my limitations had been less rigid, but that 
happily 1 may be the means of putting others better equipped 
upon the trail. 

The evidence now accumulated is not a chain of which 
the value can be destroyed by the breaking of a single link ; 
it is a cable of many and well woven strands sufficiently 
strong to withstand mere negation or the dull supposition 
that it may be due to " chance." Trivialities such as 

** trademarks " have naturally been deemed unworthy of 
serious attention, yet, as has been shown, they constitute a 
sequence of historical documents whose authenticity cannot 
be impeached. These documents exist in untold millions 
among the libraries and bookshops of the world. In the 
dust of old volumes may be read the aspirations and the 
sufferings of the men who made them—actions which 
after the lapse of centuries smell sweet and blossom in 
the dust. Some years ago a leading periodical rebuked 
me for attributing any meaning or importance to paper- 

214 

CONCLUSION 

215 

marks. " They took very curious shapes" it conceded, but 
the explanation of this was that "in all probability the 
•workmen varied them for their own amusement (!)." 

The story as I have endeavoured to interpret it may be 
wrong in some of its details; its poetic fragrance has 
certainly been much impaired by its transit through my 
matter of fact English mind, but in its broad issues it 
conveys, I am convinced, a fair outline of the truth. 

The evidence of papermarks leaves no loop to hang a 
doubt on that the early manufacture of paper was almost 
if not entirely in the hands of anti-Ecclesiastics. It is of 
course not infrequent to find old papers in which no water 
mark occurs, and occasionally one comes across what is 
apparently a purely Catholic emblem. Facts such as these 
are exceptions to be expected ; they do not disturb the main 
conclusions. 

Books free from watermarks are as a rule equally free 
from printer's ornaments. It is a reasonable and natural 
inference that Albigensian printers obtained their paper 
supplies from makers who shared their sentiments which 
were expressed in similar emblems. 

It is worthy of note that many terms of modern 
publishing are directly derived from ancient watermarks. 
The Crown 8vo, that figures so constantly in booksellers' 
catalogues, arises from the celestial crown of the paper- 
makers. The St. Grail has been corrupted into "pot" 
with its multiples double and quad pot. The Horn of 
Roland—although it is to be found centuries before the 
introduction of any post—has been erroneously assumed to 
represent a post-horn^ whence the terms large and small 
post. The Holy Dove survives in the name Colombier, 
and the Troubadours—those mediaeval Fools who grew 

 zio NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

wise through pity—have become a household word in the 
name Foolscap, 

It may be objected that Troubadours and Fools were 
distinct classes. I refer the sceptic to Les Mystères de la 
Chevalerie, E. Aroux, Paris, 1858, and to a scholarly 
little work by Mrs Cooper-Oakley entitled Traces of a 
Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Mediœval Mysticism, 
London, 1900. There was also an interesting article on 
the Guild Fools of Mediaeval France in the June 1907 
issue of Broad Views. " Pray Heaven," says the writer, 
" I had some of these * splendid fools ' with their * wicked 
wit ' among my ancestors ; men with an irrepressible spirit 
of humour, * fellows of infinite jest,' who considered it their 
duty to be happy in themselves, and to endeavour to make 
others so, and who lashed with their caustic speech alike the 
prelate and the priest, the king and the courtier. For the 
first duty, the first privilege that devolved on the Fool 
when he became an * innocent ' in the eyes of the Law, was 
to tell the truth !. The Guild Fool as such was a mysterious 
character who appeared in dramatic guilds, chiefly in 
Mediaeval France. These Guilds resembled somewhat the 
literary and dramatic clubs of our own day, but within and 
behind them was seen a definite moral aim working strongly 
for the uplifting of public ideals. We find also a certain 
collusion between the members of them, which seems to 
suggest some stronger bond than any merely literary club 
would give." 

" The Fool's duty was to help in the liberating of 
humanity as he had himself been liberated from all dogmas, 
forms, and human tyranny, and from the tutelage of priests. 
For the first step upon the mystic road made a man 
centuries ago, as it does to-day, an iconoclast. A man must 

CONCLUSION 

217 

learn to break up his idols, the idols of his own brain, the 
idols of his own heart. His is the freedom of a heart 
dedicated to one alone. And the name of the one far-off 
and invisible Mistress that the Fool of the Middle Ages 
dreamt of as he walked in the garden at night apart from 
the crowd of the rich and ignorant, which he had been 
convulsing with his wit—her name was TRUTH." 

Upwards of a century ago, the symbol of the Fool gave 
place in this country to the watermark below. Since then 

Modern 

FIG. 408. 

practically every sheet of foolscap made in England has 
borne this mark, and the reader will probably see it in the 
next sheet of writing paper he examines. The paper- 
makers' " Britannia " of to-day is in reality the same divinity 
who was figured centuries ago with the crescent of the Dawn 
upon her forehead. 

It is unnecessary to digress into the story of Britannia's 
birth and parentage. It will be noticed that as she appears in 

 2i8 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

papermark, she is encircled by the ellipse, or Mundane Egg 
of the Philosophers, surmounted by a celestial crown. In 
one hand she holds the trefoil (originally it was often an 
olive branch), in the other a diamond-tipped spear. At her 
feet flow the waters of the Holy Spirit. 

Many of the curious marks that are to-day in con 
ventional use by the makers of handmade papers (serving 
to designate certain sizes) are survivals of long-ago-disused 
designs. Thus for instance in Fig. 409 may be traced clear 
reminiscences of the head, eyes and horns of a Bull. 

Vr\. Modern 

FIG. 408*.—1722. FIG. 409. 

It might reasonably be supposed that a Trade 
clinging thus conservatively to its traditions would possess 
some knowledge of the romantic cause to which these are 
traceable. It happens that I am associated with a firm 
whose records go back for upwards of one hundred and 
twenty years. Yet strange as it may seem, neither my 

CONCLUSION 

219 

partners nor myself have the slightest inkling of any 
traditions or knowledge existing on this subject, nor have 
I been able to trace such in any other directions. 

Circumstances naturally bring me into close contact 
with Printing, and among printers and publishers I have 
many friends. Here again, however, no traditions as to 
the great rôle played by Printing in the past seem to have 
survived. There exists, however, a curious organisation 
called " The Chapel." The Chapel is a kind of club that 
exists among the workpeople of the more important printing 
offices. The Head of each " Chapel " is termed the Father 
of the Chapel. Within my own memory, the older work 
men of my firm commenced the day's proceedings with a 
prayer meeting. 

Making every allowance for apathy and the modern 
spirit of Commercialism, it seems hardly possible to credit 
that the memory of such momentous doings should have 
entirely vapoured away into oblivion. I have sometimes 
wondered whether by chance I have stumbled upon one 
of the tracks of Freemasonry. Masonic emblems are, 
however, a class distinct from those here dealt with. The 
geometrical symbols of Freemasonry, so frequently to be 
seen in continental churches, are also to be found in 
printer's marks and on the title-pages of books, but I 
have not now considered them. My reading of Masonic 
history leads me to conclude that it was not until the seven- j | 
teenth or eighteenth centuries that modern Masonry came into 
existence. Moreover, it is difficult to believe that, assuming 
the possession of a correct knowledge, masonic writers 
would suffer the wrong, and sometimes infamous, misinter 
pretations that have been placed by the world on—say 
the Alchemistical Philosophers, the Renaissance, Elizabethan 

 1ι»1 

220 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

poetry, and other equally ill-judged subjects. They might 
consider it impolitic to disclose the true facts, but they are 
not called upon to mock their avowed mistress, Truth. 

A second and more likely source of information, and 
that to which one naturally turns, are those survivors of 
Albigensianism still known as the Waldenses. At the first 
opportunity it is my intention to visit the valleys of this 
wonderful little people, and glean what information can be 
gathered. The narrative of Dr Gilly, who travelled 
among them in 1825, is extremely touching: "Much as 
I was prejudiced in favour of this extraordinary race, before 
I became personally acquainted with their character, that 
acquaintance has increased my admiration of them. If 
innocence and pure religion can be said to reign anywhere, 
it is here; and all my inquiries and researches have had 
the effect of bringing the firm conviction to my mind, that 
they are one of those favoured people, whom the arm of 
the Almighty has providentially shielded, for purposes best 
known to His inscrutable wisdom. Their morals correspond 
with their faith ; and their lives and conversation testify 
that the doctrines they profess are those of the truth ; for 
nothing short of a firm persuasion, that they are burning 
and shining lights, which are not to be put out, could have 
given them courage and perseverance, sufficient to withstand 
the temptations, to which their spiritual integrity has been 
exposed, or to resist the strong hand which has been lifted 
up against them for more than ten centuries. I had 
opportunities of observing the conduct of individuals of this 
little community, at different times, and under various 
circumstances, at home and abroad, in the transactions of 
business, and the kindly courtesies of life, and in their 
hours of devotion and festivity, and I am impressed with 

CONCLUSION 

221 

the belief that there is nothing exaggerated, either in the 
favourable representations made by their own historians, or 
in the eulogies of strangers." 

The Waldenses, says Dr Gilly, were the first to expose 
the abuses of the Romish Church. " They were the first 
who engaged to cleanse this Augean stable of corruption : 
and if we had records that would enable us to follow step 
by step through their bold and arduous undertaking, we 
should be able to exhibit one of the most glorious pictures 
of human perseverance that was ever displayed." 

With all humility I submit that papermarks and 
printer's ornaments are unquestionable records of Waldensian 
activity, and that here is to be found unrolled that marvellous 
picture of perseverance which Dr Gilly anticipated. 

" We will await with patience the appointed time," l 
is an expression that was heard constantly by Dr Gilly, 
and he understood it as possibly an allusion to the part 
which the Waldenses have borne, and expect to bear, in the 
grand scheme for the propagation of true Christianity 
among mankind. 

It is quite conceivable that these extraordinary people 
possess traditional records, but that it is out of keeping with 
their principles to disclose their own accomplishments. 
Their Christianity seems to have been unworldly in its 
purity. The story of their sufferings and persecutions— 
horrors too monstrous for description—almost too vast to be 
believed, are depicted in detail in Leger's very scarce work 
published in 1655. " That volume," said a Waldensian to 
Dr Gilly, " I never saw until I was twenty-four years of 
age, although it was in my father's and grandfather's 
possession ; nor have I ever permitted either of my own 

1 This is reminiscent of "the time of the end," see p. 195. 

 222 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

children to open a page of it. // is one of our principles 
not to say or do anything -which shall have the effect of 
exasperating the minds of our youth against their Roman 
Catholic brethren" 

Charity such as this is more than capable of the decision, 
* The Light is here ; the past is done with, and what 
matters the part we have played ? ' 

But momentous though the rôle and deep the footprints 
of this great-minded little people, the heretical Church of the 
Holy Grail was something more than pure Waldensianism. 
It was a broader and more significant stream. Rising in 
the dim East, its manifold windings may be traced throughout 
the Dark Ages. Its waters were unquestionably fed by 
Waldensian streamlets which mingled ebbing and flowing 
with other tributaries. I doubt whether the influence 
exercised by the Romaunt of the Rose or the Song of Roland 
can be referred solely to Waldensianism. The Legends of 
the St. Grail had an Eastern origin : so too Alchemy. It 
is said by some historians that the fearful vengeance that 
fell upon the Templars was due to their adherence to the 
Grail Church. There was too, I imagine, no great 
sympathy between the oriental subtleties of the Kabbalah 
and the austere tenets of Peter Waldo. 

If I were a believer in the theory of reincarnation, the 
spirit of a Troubadour Grail Knight reappeared, I should 
say, in the person of Richard Wagner. The philosophy of 
Wagner was a remarkable blend of Catholic and Protestant, 
Christian and Buddhist ideas ; it was curiously similar in 
this respect to the philosophy displayed in papermarks and 
woodblocks. Wagner appreciated that the highest and 
most potent mode of playing upon Humanity's heartstrings 
was by a combination of Music, Poetry and Stage-craft. 

CONCLUSION 

223 

His themes centre around the mystery of the St. Grail 
and kindred myths. In his Mastersingers (the next inheritors 
of the Minnesingers or Troubadours) he gives us Hans 
Sachs, the historic cobbler-poet. In Sachs we see a repre 
sentative of the unnumbered paper-poets, printer-poets and 
other artisans who combined work with aspiration. Sachs 
was a typical Son of the Dawn, one of those whom Bacon 
terms Fil'ii Auroree^ men " full of towardness and hope." 
Listen to the exultant hymn in which he pours out his 
soul to Luther and the Reformation :— 

" Awake ! Awake ! The day is near 
And from the leafy hedge I hear 
The love-enchanted nightingale 
Whose song resounds through hill and dale : 
The night to westward sinks away, 
Out of the East appears the Day. 
The darkling veil of clouds is drawn 
And bright with scarlet burns the Dawn." 

But more remarkable is the ** Prize Song " placed by 
Wagner in the mouth of the aspiring youth who carries off 
the Mastersingers' laurels. Translated by Mr F. Corder 
it reads :— 

" Morning was gleaming with roseate light, 
The air was filled 
With scent distilled 
Where, beauty beaming, 
Past all dreaming, 
A garden did invite. 
Wherein, beneath a wondrous tree 

With fruit superbly laden, 
In blissful love-dream I could see 

The rare and tender maiden, 
Whose charms, beyond all price, 
Entranced by heart— 
Eve, in Paradise. 

 .' 

224 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

" Evening was darkling, and night closed around ; 
By rugged way 
My feet did stray 
Towards a mountain 
Where a. fountain 
Enslaved me with its sound ; 
And there beneath a lanrel tree, 
With starlight glinting under, 
In waking vision greeted me 
A sweet and solemn wonder ; 
She dropped on me the fountain's dews, 

That woman fair— 
Parnassus' glorious Muse. 

" Thrice happy day, 
To which my poet's trance gave place ! 
That Paradise of which I dreamed, 
In radiance new before my face 

Glorified lay. 
To point out the path the laughing brooklet streamed : 

She stood beside me 

Who shall my bride be, 

The fairest sight earth e'er gave, 

My Muse, to whom I bow, 

So angel-sweet and grave, 

I woo her boldly now : 

Before the world remaining, 

My might of music gaining 

Parnassus and Paradise ! " 

Observe how in these lines is concentrated much of the 
mythology we have been considering. Walter "pretends to" 
Eva, the daughter of Pogner, but the Eva who dwelt in the 
Orchard of the Rose, the love pilgrim, the mountain, the 
fountain, the dew, the woman fair and the bride, all these 
are as purely allegorical as the Song of Solomon. 

I have glanced thus briefly at the art of Richard 
Wagner, because in that direction only is recognisable any 
appreciation of the verities underlying mediaeval romance. 

CONCLUSION 

225 

As for Printing and Papermaking, the sordid claw of Com 
petition has so torn and rent the exquisite fabric in which 
these trades were once adorned that nothing now remains 
but some few neglected shreds and patches. 

In the Edinburgh Review of July 1906, there appeared 
a very able article on French Illuminism. The writer 
states that at the opening of the eighteenth century there 
survived all over Europe legends of secret societies that 
had existed for the pursuit of mystical philosophy. 
" Speaking generally," says he, ** their interest did not 
lie in the region of politics or polemics, but in that of 
study, experiment and speculation ; and their chief care 
was the preservation and elucidation of ancient hermetic 
and traditional secrets." Their teaching was theosophic 
and moral (the morals of mysticism are nearly always clean 
and sweet); their method was to develop the somnolent 
divine faculties in humanity, and to lead man into a closer 
relation with the invisible. Their objective was Liberty— 
the freedom of the soul from its own passions and the 
liberation of mankind from the tyranny of temporal 
powers. The word LIBERTAS watermarked on p. 35 was 
a dangerous motto in those days. The efforts of authority 
to disembarrass the world of its thinkers were directed 
even more bitterly against political dreamers. " The forget- 
fulness by vassals," wrote Don John of Austria to his 
kinsman Philip II. of Spain, "is so dangerous that all 
princes and potentates, even those at the moment exempt 
from trouble, should assist in preparing the remedy in order 
that their subjects may not take it into their heads to do 
the like, liberty being a contagious disease^ which goes on 
infecting one neighbour after another, if the cure be not 
promptly applied." 

 226 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

What we call the Renaissance was merely the fruiting 
of a plant whose cult had been the cherished work of 
centuries. Persecution forced its guardians into strange 
shifts and mysterious modes of intercommunication. 
Enveloped by the spies and familiars of the Inquisition, 
those responsible for the Renaissance were driven to play 
their great game in profound secrecy. Men of deep ends, 
they trod deep ways. They may be recognised flitting 
across the stage of History in the guises inter alia of 
Romanticists, Troubadours, Pilgrims of Love, Templars, 
Alchemists, and Illuminati. 

It should be of great interest to us to look back into 
the centuries, and see the strange methods to which men 
were compelled to resort for the simple privilege of living 
and thinking honestly. Changing frequently their tactics 
they deviated never from their aims. The machinery they 
devised was so subtle that we may, if we will, catch across 
the ages, the cry, the whisper, and the smile, which con 
temporary tyranny had no instrument keen enough to 
detect or firm enough to suppress. 

It is amazing the risks they ran, but the tangible 
evidence of " pagan " emblems, such as Diana (p. 61 ), are 
too obvious for us to question those risks. On the other 
hand, it is surprising how in the face of forces so numerous, 
so subtle, and so persevering, the Church of Rome was able 
to maintain her stability. 

In that Titanic struggle nothing is more surprising 
than the strength and duration of the influence exercised 
by the mediaeval romances. Upon deliberate consideration 
my judgment is that a concealed instruction and allegory 
was originally intended in many of these ancient fables. 
As Bacon continues in the Wisdom of the Ancients : " I 

CONCLUSION 

227 

receive them not as the product of the age or invention 
of the poets, but as sacred relics. Gentle whispers and 
the breath of better times that from the traditions of more 
ancient nations came at length into the flutes and trumpets 
of the Greeks." 

For " Greeks " we may substitute " French " ; indeed 
all the evidence tends to the conclusion that France, and not 
Italy, was the nursing mother of the Renaissance. The word 
romance originally designated a story written in roman^ 
i.e. eleventh or twelfth century French instead of Latin. 
The "Song of Roland," the Legends of the St. Grail 
and the Romaunt of the Rose were French. The 
beautiful culture of Provence which at first permeated 
Southern Europe, and eventually the whole continent, 
with a perfume of poetry and gentle living, was 
essentially French. J. A. Symonds remarks that the 
Albigensian dissenters from the Catholic Church opposed 
the phalanxes of Orthodoxy with but "frail, imaginative 
weapons." Were he to turn to the Industrial aspect of 
Albigensianism, Symonds would confirm my conclusion 
that these poetic heretics were as great in deeds as in dreams. 
Their character was, as M. Berard states in Les Vaudois^ 
" a strange combination of ardent mysticism, cold reason, and 
valiant courage at labour." That we English are indebted 
to French sources for the art of papermaking, is manifest 
from the fact that even to-day French terms such as 
retree, couch rolls (from coucher\ demy, colombier, etc., 
are in use among us. The Province of Auvergne claims to 
have been the cradle of European papermaking. Certainly 
it was a flourishing centre of the industry for many 
centuries. The Troubadours were French. The Guilds 
of Rhetoric existed " chiefly in mediaeval France," whence 

 228 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

they permeated Europe. The first poetical impulse of the 
cultured classes in Italy "came to Italy from Provence" 
The Battlefield of Freedom was mainly the unhappy 
Netherlands where for upwards of one hundred years the 
people maintained an heroic struggle against the subtle and 
remorseless powers of Spain. The revolt entered "not 
through the Augsburg but the Huguenot gate. The fiery 
field-preachers from the South of France first inflamed the 
excitable hearts of the kindred population of the South 
western Netherlands." 

The writer on Illuminism from whom I have already 
quoted states that " In France it [Illuminism] was epitomised. 
From Avignon, Lyons and other citadels of Freedom there 
flashed," says he, "through the grey night of feudalism, 
the watchfires of great hope tended by those priests of 
progress who though unable to lift the veil that shrouds 
the destiny of man and the end of worlds, by faith 
were empowered to dedicate the future to the Unknown 
God." 

In studying the philosophy of papermarks and woodcuts, 
I have often mentally debated whether it was " Christian." 
In the narrow sense of modern Christianity it certainly was 
not. Aroux states that Dante conceived the audacious 
project of employing Ecclesiastical symbols to convey his 
Platonic teaching. Schmidt asserts that the Cathari did not 
accept Jesus Christ literally^ but that they employed the 
dogmas of Christianity as emblems of a deeper philosophy, 
adopting merely what suited their own purposes. " Far 
from being a Christian philosophy, " says he, " the system 
of the Cathari was linked to the metaphysical speculations of 
paganism." 

This, however, is an aspect of the subject that it is 

CONCLUSION 

229 

unnecessary for me to consider. I entrust it to students of 
the New Theology with the comment of Ecclesiastes, " Is 
there a thing whereof men say, See this is New ? It hath 
been already in the ages which were before us." 

I am not without hope that the clergy may come 
forward and assist in the unravelling of the many problems 
still awaiting solution. To them this is a subject fraught 
with a vital importance. We shall hear less of the 
failure of Christianity if it be proved—as it can—that the 
moral progress of Europe has been due to a highly intel 
lectual form of Christianity; and it will infuse new 
confidence and hope into those who view with disquietude 
the present position of the churches. The so-called church- 
less spirit of the age is due not to ill-will, nor to intellectual 
apathy, but rather to the superficial materialism of the 
Christianity seen around. 

The irrigation system of the Church is excellent, but its 
reservoirs are running dry. If it is to refill them, it must 
be by the appreciation of the truths underlying symbolism, 
and by the distinction between matters of fact and matters 
of allegory. "Theologians," says Emerson, "think it a 
pretty air castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship, 
or a cloud, of a city, or a contract ; but the highest minds 
of the world have never ceased to explore the double mean 
ing, or shall I say the quadruple, or the centuple, or much 
more manifold meaning of every sensuous fact." 

" Allegory," says Bacon, " is like a casket in which the 
most precious things of science are wont to be laid up." 
Equally true is it that " even to this day if any man would 
let new light in upon the human understanding, and 
conquer prejudice without raising contests, animosities, 
opposition, or disturbance, he must still go in the same path, 

 230 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and have recourse to the like method of allegory, metaphor, 
and allusion." 

It is not to be feared that the realisation that many 
portions of the Old and New Testament are allegorical will 
result in any real loss of Faith. Faith survives, but as 
Christie Murray says, the form dies when faith has parted 
from it. "A thousand creeds have perished, and at the 
fall of each there has gone up an exceeding bitter cry that 
faith has flown and has left the world without a comforter, 
and even whilst the clamour rises the new faith stands 
there to smile its promise, loftier, lovelier, nobler than of 
old." 

As trustees of our national Cathedrals, there is yet an 
additional reason why the clergy should scientifically 
investigate symbolism—particularly the symbolism of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. To the Cathedral 
Builders sculpture was not mere ornament, but the expres 
sion of their Theosophy. As Leader Scott points out: 
" The verya5 smallest tracery had a meaning ; every leaf, 
every rudely carved animal spoke in mystic language of 
some great truth in religion." This writer argues with 
great acumen the existence of a Masonic Guild traceable to 
the Comacine Masters. The headquarters of this Guild 
were Lombardy, of which the arms are to be seen in water 
mark on p. 30. The symbols used by these architects of 
Lombardy are, speaking generally, the same as those 
employed by their fellow Lombardian papermakers. Not 
only the ornamentation of churches, but their general form 
were largely, if not entirely, governed by Symbolism. It is 
from The Symbolism of the Churches by Durandus the Pro 
vençal, that I have quoted so largely in the preceding pages. 

** History," says Sismondi, " has no true importance, 

CONCLUSION 

231 

but as it contains a moral lesson. It should be explored 
not for scenes of carnage, but for instructions in the 
government of mankind." To the Ethnologist and the 
Psychologist, the story I have disinterred will, I am in 
hopes, be of some value. The Church of the Holy Grail 
has broken the conditions which once fettered her, but her 
enemies, though now less material, are still ruthless and 
malignant. To contend with them successfully, the Church 
of the Future must cancel the unwarrantable distinction 
between " secular " and ** sacred," and must re-enlist her 
old-time emissaries the Musicians, the Dramatists, the 
Novelists, the Painters, and the Poets. 

FINIS 

A'iz/fif=good health be with you : 

may you fare well ! 
(Papermark. Toulouse, 1561.) 

 Ι-'-Λ 

'Ir* 

u 

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 

The facts now presented tend to prove that— 

1. From their first appearance in 1282, until the latter half of the 
eighteenth century, the curious designs inserted into paper 
in the form of watermarks constitute a coherent and uu- 
broken chain of emblems. 

2. That these emblems are Thought-fossils or Thought-crystals, 
in which lie enshrined the aspirations and traditions of the 
numerous mystic and puritanic sects by which Europe was 
overrun in the Middle Ages. 

3. Hence that these papermarks are historical documents of 
high importance, throwing light not only on the evolution 
of European thought, but upon many obscure problems of 
the past. 

4. Watermarks denote that papermaking was an art introduced 
into Europe, and fostered there by the pre-Reformation 
Protestant sects known in France as the Albigenses and 
Waldenses, and in Italy as the Cathari or Patarini. 

5- That these heresies, though nominally stamped out by the 
Papacy, existed secretly for many centuries subsequent to 
their disappearance from the sight of History. 

6. The embellishments used by printers in the Middle Ages 
are emblems similar to those used by papermakers, and ex 
plicable by a similar code of interpretation. 

7. The awakening known as the Renaissance was the direct 
result of an influence deliberately and traditionally exercised 
by papermakers, printers, cobblers, and other artisans. 

8. The nursing mother of the Renaissance and consequently 
of the Reformation was not, as hitherto assumed, Italy, but 
the Provençal district of France. 

These are novel and subversive propositions, but I have confidence 
that History will eventually accept them. 

HAROLD BAYLEY. 

S32 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

i. Papermarks Emblematic. In his Principia Typographica 
S. L. Sotheby conjectured that watermarks were 
dictated by the nature of the books in which they 
are found. "I venture to assert," he writes, "that 
until after, or probably the close of, the XVth century 
there are no marks in paper which may be said to 
apply individually to the maker of the paper." The 
first writer to appreciate the significance of water 
marks was Mrs. Henry Pott, who published her 
conclusions in Francis Bacon and his Secret Society 
(Chicago, 1891), a book containing many valuable 
facts and suggestions. 

4. Prof. Courthope. Cf. A History of English Poetry, ii. 
344-347. In An Introduction to the Literature of Europe 
Hallam observes : " This scheme of allegorical inter 
pretation began among the earliest fathers, and spread 
with perpetual expansion through the Middle Ages. 
The Reformation swept most of it away"(i. 204). 

5. Laborare est orare. Cf. Les Vaudois. Alex. Berard, 
Lyons, 1892, p. 106. 

6. Papermaking and Heresy. M. Briquet mentions that in 
the seventeenth century the Province of Angoumois 
was pre-eminent for its papermaking. He states: "The 
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes dealt a severe blow 
to this industry. Most of the paper merchants who 
had succeeded in concentrating the business into their 
own hands were Dutch or English, all Protestants. 
Their departure from the kingdom, by depriving the 
master papermakers not only of the capital they needed, 
but of the extended business relations requisite for 
distribution, paralyzed the manufacture." It is said that 
papermaking gave employment to a million work- 

»33 

 234 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

people in Angoumois. "This working population," 
says M. Briquet, "formed a distinct class. The workers 
constituted corporations, and followed traditions and 
regulations that were transmitted from father to son. 
They did not willingly admit strangers within their 
ranks, and, closely united among themselves, they often, 
in some measure, dictated terms to their patrons " 
(Les Filigranes, iv. 690, 691). 

In Histoire des Papeteries à la cuve d'Arches et 
d'Archettes (Paris, 1904) M. Henri Onfroy throws 
some valuable sidelights on the secret organisation of 
the papermakers' guilds. "One is struck," says he, 
" by the general spirit of insubordination that from all 
time has animated papermaking workmen. Collaborating 
in the propagation of the written thought which during 
the ι8th century was the great destructive agent of the 
state of affairs up till then respected, it would seem that 
the papermaking workmen had a knowledge of the social 
upheavals which were about to occur, and. of which they 
were the obscure auxiliaries. All the documents that con 
cern their history reveal numerous facts which demon 
strate the opinionativeness and turbulence of their 
claims" (p. 36). 

I was unacquainted with this passage until the fore 
going pages were in print. It is gratifying to find 
external testimony to a state of affairs which I had 
already deduced from internal evidence. 

p. 7. The ornament is a papermark from Sir Francis Bacon 
and his Secret Society. The author gives no date or 
reference. 

,, 8. This print is reproduced by the courtesy of Mr. Lewis 
Evans. 

,, io. Les Filigranes. The University of Geneva has conferred 
upon M. C. M. Briquet the distinction of Docteur es 
Lettres, honoris causa, in recognition of the eminent 
service rendered to History, Archaeology, and Ethnology 
by the publication of Les Filigranes. Unhappily the 
twenty-five years spent on its preparation has cost the 
author the use of his eyesight. On glancing over my 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

235 

references to M. Briquet's monumental work I find them 
inadequately expressive of the respect and admiration 
it demands. I therefore take the present opportunity 
of recording my profound appreciation and gratitude. 
M. Briquet's work is a classic that must eventually 
be found in every library of any importance. 

p. i?. Montet. Cf. Histoire Littéraire des Vaudois. Ed. Montet, 
Paris, 1885, p. 13. 

Dieulouard. Cf. Nouveau Dictionnaire de Géographie Uni 
verselle. Saint Martin, Paris, 1884. 

Pâtes = " Patois méridionaux signifiant vieux linger Cf. 
Histoire des Cathares ou Albigeois. C. Schmidt, Geneva, 

1849, ü- 279- 

In The Empire and the Papacy T. F. Tout, M.A. 
says : " The Paterini were known as the ragpickers and 
' the ragbags ' " (p. 115). 

„ 14. Illustrations. Except where otherwise stated these are 
from examples in my own collection. The watermarks 
are reduced to one-half their actual size. The printers' 
ornaments are facsimiles·. 

The following are the abbreviations employed :— 
B. =Les Filigranes. C. M. Briquet, Geneva, 1907. 
S. = Principia Typographica. S. L. Sotheby, Lond. 

1858. 

J. = Es sai sur la gravure. Jansen, Paris, 1808. 
M.M. = Étude sur les Filigranes. Midoux, E., et Matton, 

A., Paris, 1868. 

P. = Francis Bacon and his Secret Society. Mrs. Pott, 
Chicago, 1891. 

„ 14. Figs. 2 and 3. From Note sur la Papeterie d'Auvergne. 
M. Cohendy, Clermont, 1862. 

„ „ Heart. According to Dionysius the Areopagite—a 
writer whose works " swayed the whole of mediaeval 
Christianity more than any other book except the 
New Testament itself"—the heart is "a symbol of 
the Godlike life dispersing its own life-giving power to 
the objects of its forethought, as beseems the good." 
By French papermakers the heart (generally accentuated 

 236 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

by an additional symbol) was often employed in lieu of 
the full stop. The curious triangle of C. Lebon may 
possibly be an expression of Quarles' sentiment : 

" The whole round world is not enough to fill 
The heart's three corners, but it craveth etili ; 
Only the Trinity that made it can 
Suffice the vast trlangled heart of man." 

5ÜH) 

VA Dfí 

French Papermarks, i8th century. 

p. 15. Figs. 4, 5, and 6 (S.). 

Unicorn. Cf. The Triumphal Chariot of Alchemy. Lond. 
l%93i P- 59- Symbolism in Christian Art. F. E. 
Hulme. Lond. 1892, p. 178. Shakespeare and the 
Emblem Writers. H. Green, Lond. 1870, p. 371. 
The unicorn was used as a watermark in Venice so late 
as 1778. 

„ 16. Figs. 7 and 8 (M.M.) ; io (S.). 

Stag. Cf. Symbolism in Christian Art, p. 176. 
„ 17. Figs, ii, i2, and 13 (M.M.). 
„ 18. Figs. 14-17 (B.). 

Fig. 18 (M.M.). 

The Tau Cross, surrounded by a crown, may sometimes 
be seen decorating English churches. " The cross as 
an emblem of regeneration was first adopted by the 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

Egyptians, who expressed the several increases of the 
Nile (by whose fertilising inundations the soil was 
regenerated) by a column marked with several crosses. 
They hung it as a talisman around the necks of their 
children and sick people. It was sometimes represented 
in an abridged form by the letter T." Histoire du 
Ciel. Pluche. Cf. A Lexicon of Freemasonry. A. G. 
Mackey, p. 78. 

Ladder. In the Mithraic rites at the Christian era the 
Ladder was used as a type of the means whereby the 
soul's ascent was made through the various grades to 
the celestial spheres. 

p. 20. Figs. 22 (P.) ; 23, 24 (M.M.) ; 25 (B.) ; 26 (S.). 

„ 2i. Fig. 27 (B.). 

Candlestick. Cf. The Symbolism of Churches and Church 

Ornaments. Durandus, Lond. 1906, p. 34. 
Scissors. Ibid., p. 54. 

„ 22. Durandus first printed. I made this statement on the 
authority of the editors of Durandus, but Mr. Peddie, 
of the Blades Library—to whom I am indebted for 
many courtesies—points out that it's accuracy is rather 
doubtful. The first edition of Durandus was in 1459, 
and in 1457 one or two small things were issued other 
than Psalters or Bibles. 

„ 24. Serpent. Cf. Isis Unveiled. H. P. Blavatsky, i. 147. 
Balzac. Cf. Quest of the Absolute. 

„ 25. Figs. 34, 35, and 36 (B.). 

Knot Cross. Mrs. G. F. Watts alludes, in The Word in 
the Pattern, to the " beautiful knot often found upon 
Celtic crosses where the cord traces four hearts inter 
laced so as to give at the same time the sign of the 
cross, sacrificing love ; love not for one, but for all, 
even to the four quarters of the Earth—Divine Love, 
sacrificing, suffering, dying, to give spiritual life " 

(P· 13)· 
Fylfot Knot. Mrs. Watts states that the Sanscrit name 

for the central cross here shown has in it the root 

'.I! 
! 

 238 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

words "to be" and "well"; a sign of beneficence 
indicating that " the maze of life may bewilder, but 
the path of light runs through it: 'It is well' is the 
name of the path, and the key to life eternal is in the 
strange labyrinth for those whom ' God leadeth ' " 
(p. 15). Cf. The Migration of Symbols, Count Goblet 
d'Alviella, and Symbolism of the East and West, Murray- 
Aynsley. 

p. 26. Figure Four. Almost all the peoples of antiquity possessed 
a name for Deity consisting of four letters. Thus : 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

239 

27 

Assyrian 

Egyptian 

Persian 

Greek 

Latin 

German 

French 

Turkish 

Arabian 

ADAD 

AMUN 

SYRE or SIRE 

(TH)EOS 

DEUS 

GOTT 

DIEU 

ESAR 

ALLH 

Cf. Numbers : Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtue, 
W. Wynn Westcott, London, 1890, p. 22 ; Isis 
Unveiled, i. 9. 

Scales. Cf. Isis Unveiled, ii. 457. 

Figs- 37, 38, 39, 4o (B.) ; 41, 42 (S.). 

Pelican. In St. Saviour's Church, Reading, there is a 

Pelican lectern. 
Figs. 43, 45, 46 (S.) ; 44 (M.M.). 
28. Figs. 48, 53 (B·); 50,51,52 (S.). 

29· Fig. 59 (P.). " Old writer " = Purchas. Cf. Microcosmos, 
Lond. 1619. 

30. Fig. 62 (B.). 

31. Trinity = Man. The Lollards designated human beings 
as " second Trinitys." Cf. Lollardy and the Reformation. 
Dr. J. Gairdner, Lond. 1908, i. 12, 48. 
Aroux. Cf. Dante; Hérétique, Révolutionnaire, et Socialiste. 

Paris, 1854, p. 94. 
Massinger. Emperor of the East, i. 2. 

Ρ· 34- 

37- 

Star. Cf. Microcosmos. Purchas, Lond. 1619. "The 
mind is not divided from the essence of God, but 
connexed thereto as light to the body of the Sun. . . . 
Fixing her eye on God, it is filled with Divine power 
and makes the body like to a shining starre " (p. 569). 

Om Mani, etc. These are the concluding lines of Sir 
Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia. 

„35· Fig- 85 (JO; 86 (B.); 87 (S.). 

36. The Provencals. Cf. The Troubadours .· their Loves and 
their Lyrics. ]. Rutherford, Lond. 1873, pp. 3, 12, 
and 44. 

Kill them all. This memorable principle was again 
urged in 1602, when the descendants of the Moors 
were evicted from Spain—to the number of 2 millions 
of men, women, and children. According to Buckle : 

" The Archbishop of Valencia thought that children 
under seven years of age need not share in the general 
banishment, but might, without danger to the faith, be 
separated from their parents, and kept in Spain. To 
this the Archbishop of Toledo strongly objected. He 
was unwilling, he said, to run the risk of pure Christian 
blood being polluted by infidels ; and he declared that 
sooner than leave one of these unbelievers to corrupt 
the land, he would have the whole of them—men, 
women, and children—at once put to the sword. That 
they should all be slain, instead of being banished, was 
the desire of a powerful party in the Church, who 
thought that such signal punishment would work good 
by striking terror into the heretics of every nation. 
Bleda, the celebrated Dominican, one of the most 
influential men of his time, wished to have this done, 
and to be done thoroughly. He said that, for the sake 
of example, every Morisco in Spain should have his 
throat cut, because it was impossible to tell which of 
them were Christians at heart, and it was enough to 
leave the matter to God, who knew his own, and who 
would reward in the next world those who were really 
Catholics" (History of Civilisation, ii. 395 [World's 
Classics]). 

 240 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

p. 37. Count Raymond. Hallam mentions the existence in the 
Tower of London of a letter from one of the Counts of 
Toulouse, circa 1216, "upon very strong paper." I 
have examined at the Record Office the document pre 
sumably that to which Hallam refers. It is only about 
four inches square, and being pasted into a guardbook, 
the watermark, if any, is not apparent. 

„ 38. Moors and papermaking. It is said that the first manu 
facture of rag-paper in Europe was in Spain. In 1154 
there was a mill at Jativa, and soon after traces of 
papermaking are found in Italy, France, and Germany. 
As 1194 was the date when the Albigenses were 
evicted from Aragon, it seems not improbable that it 
was they who brought the art into Christian Europe. 
Among early papermarks is a human head, which 
Sotheby characterises as " a Moor's head." If it really 
be a Moor's head, this would be presumptive evidence 
that the art was derived from the Moors and that a 
tradition of the fact had survived. 

„ 38. Waldenses. Cf. Les Vaudois. Alex. Berard, Lyons, 
1892. Luther's Forerunners: the bloody rage ofthat 
great Antichrist of Rome declared at large in the History 
of the Waldenses and Albigenses, translated out of the 
French by Samson Lennard, Lond. 1624. Narrative 
of an Excursion to the mountains of Piedmont and 
researches among the Vaudois or Waldenses. W. S. 
Gilly, M.A., Lond. 1825. Histoire des Cathares ou 
Albigeois. C. Schmidt, Geneva, 1849. Histoire 
Littéraire des Vaudois. Ed. Montet, 1885. The 
Waldensian MSS. J. H. Todd, 1865. Also articles 
"Waldenses," "Albigenses," and "Cathari" in 
Chambers1 Encyclopaedia. 

„ 40. Figs. 89(M.M.); 90, 91 (BO- 
,,41. Shakespeare. Cf. ι Hy. VI., IV. vu. 

Figs. 92-96 (B.). 
„ 42. Milton. Cf. Lycidas. 

Figs. 97, 98, ίσο (Β.). 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

241 

p. 43- Fig8· 101 (B0 ι I02 (S0· 

Hand. Cf. Principia Typ. Sotheby, iii. 54. Dr. Mackey 

states : " The right hand has in all ages been deemed 
an important symbol to represent the virtue of Fidelity. 
Among the ancients the right hand and fidelity to an 
obligation were almost indeed synonymous terms " 
(Lexicon of'Freemasonry, p. 290). 

Count Goblet d'Alviella mentions, in The Migration 
of Symbols, that "the hand uplifted towards the sky 
is an oft-repeated image on the ex voto of Carthage, 
and even at the present time it is figured on native 
houses in Palestine and Morocco to ward off evil spirits 
from the dwellers therein " (p. 27). 
Four. Cf. his Unveiled, i. 9. 

„ 44. Figs. 103-105 (B.). 

Bears. Cf. Hieroglyphicorum, Lib. viii., p. 80. 
Schmidt, i. 54. 

„ 45. Fig. 106 (S.). Lea, ii. 268, 269, extracted from Traces 
of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Mediäval 
Mysticism. Mrs. T. Cooper-Oakley, Lond. 1900. 

„ 46. Perfect!. The quotations are from Schmidt, ii. 94, 166. 
Ox. Cf. Symbolism in Christian Art. F. E. Hulme, Lond. 
p. 177. "The Image of the Ox," says Dionysius, 
"denotes the strong and the mature, turning up the intel 
lectual furrows for the reception of the heavenly and 
productive showers ; and the Horns, the guarding and 
indomitable" (The Heavenly Hierarchy, sect. viii.). 

„ 47. Figs. 107-115 (B.). 

„ 48. Figs. 117 (P.); no, 118-124 (B.). 

„ 50. Figs. 125, 126 (B.); 127 (S.). 

Swan. Cf. Speculum Mundi. John Swan, Lond. 1635. 
Nat. Hist. Lore and Legend. F. E. Hulme, Lond. 
1895, p. 229. "With regard to the Swan it is 
worthy of note that Ortrud was unaware of its sacred 
character when she transformed Gottfried (God's 
peace). Last year in the Glyptotek at Munich we 
found a piece of sculpture entitled, 'Eros with a 

Q 

 242 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Swan.' This is the only instance we have come across 
in which the Greek prototype of the Knights of the 
Swan is associated with the bird of Wisdom, as it is 
called in the Eastern Scriptures. It is but one more 
proof of what Wagner so truly terms ' the grand con 
cordance of all genuine myth ' " (Parsifal, Lohengrin, 
and the Legend of the Holy Grail. Cleather & Crump 
Lond. 1904, p. 90). 

p. 51. Figs. 128, 131 (B.); 129 (M.M). Bells. In The 
Golden Legend Longfellow thus touches upon the 
symbolism of Bells : 

" For the bells themselves are the best of preachers ; 
Their brazen lips are learned teachers, 
From their pulpits of stone in the upper air, 
Sounding aloft without crack or flaw, 
Shriller than trumpets under the Law, 
Now a sermon, and now a prayer. 
The clangorous hammer is the tongue, 
This way, that way beaten and swung, 
That from Mouth of Brass, as from Mouth of Gold, 
May be taught the Testaments, New and Old. 
And above it the great cross-beam of wood 
Represented! the Holy Rood, 
Upon which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. 
And the wheel wherewith it is swayed and rung 
Is the mind of man that round and round 
Sways and maketh the tongue to sound ! 
And the rope, with its twisted cordage three, 
Denoteth the Scriptural Trinity 
Of Morals, and Symbols, and History ; 
And the upward and downward motions show 
That we touch upon matters high and low ; 
And the constant change and transmutation, 
Of action and of contemplation, 
Downward the Scripture brought from on high, 
Upward, exalted again to the sky : 
Downward the literal interpretation, 
Upward the Vision of Mystery ! " 

„ 52. Bells and the Trinity of Scripture. Of the 258 Bell 
watermarks illustrated by Briquet, 239 are distin 
guished by a triplex ornament at the head. Observe 
how the Fleur de lys is employed over Fig. 130; also 
the three circles over the small Bell, Fig. 131. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

p. 53- Figs· I32'I34 (BO; 135 (S·)· 

„ 54- Fig8· '37-141 (BO- 
55-57· Troubadours. Cf. Dante, etc. E. Aroux, Paris, 1854. 
The Troubadours : their Loves and Lyrics. J. Ruther 
ford, Lond. 1873. Choix des Poesies originales des 
Troubadours. M. Raynouard, Paris 1817. The 
Troubadours. F. Hueffer, 1878. The Troubadours 
and Courts of Love. J. F. Rowbotham, Lond. 1895. 
Traces of a Hidden Tradition. Cooper-Oakley, Lond. 
1900. Les Mystères de la Chevalerie. E. Aroux, 
Paris, 1858. 

,58. Hecketnorn, G. W. Cf. The Secret Societies of all Ages and 
Countries. Lond. 1897, i. 144. 

59. Foolscap. The emblem of a jester making merry with 
cap and bells may be seen carved in Berne Cathedral. 
During the early days of the revolt of the United 
Provinces against the tyranny of Philip II. of Spain, 
Motley tells us that the retainers of the house of 
Egmont suddenly surprised Brussels by appearing in a 
livery, upon each sleeve of which was embroidered a 
fool's cap and bells. The emblem was aimed at 
Cardinal Granvelle, and was intended, says Motley, to 
remind the arrogant priest that a Brutus, as in the 
olden time, might be found lurking in the costume of 
the fool. This livery caught the popular fancy, and 
spread so rapidly among all classes of the people that 
the supply of frieze cloth in Brabant became exhausted. 
The pressure of the authorities eventually succeeded in 
getting the obnoxious emblem withdrawn. 

„ 60. Rossetti. Cf. A Disquisition on the Anti-papal Spirit that 

produced the Reformation. Lond. 1834,11. 195. 
"Thou can'st go." Cf. Dante. Aroux, p. 28. 

„ 61. Gavaudin. Cf. Rutherford, p. 44. 

Diana. Figs. 145 and 146 (B.). M. Briquet comments 
upon this mark : " It is difficult to say what this 
woman represents. Is she wearing a crown or a curly 
headdress? On what is she seated? Whatever it 

 244 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

may be, the mark seems to have originated in Lorraine, 

and to have become more or less common in that 

region" (ii. 412). 
Dante, Cf. Convivio, ii. 16. 
Bruno. Cf. Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists. 

E. A. Hitchcock, New York, 1865, p. 197. 

p. 62. Rutherford, p. 44. 

„ 63. Heckethorn, i. 149. 

Aroux. "Roland est porteur d'un cor au son puissant, 
ßgure de la predication sectaire" Cf. Dante, p. 463. 

„ 64. Figs. 147-15° Φ); 15* (S·)· 

Horn. I am inclined to think that in some cases the horn 
depicts the " Horn of Salvation." 

„ 65. Song of Roland. Cf. Translation by Jessie Crosland. 

Lond. 1907, p. 89. 

Bell "Roland." Cf. History of Dutch Republic. J. L. 
Motley (Everyman's Library), i. 63, 66. 

„ 66. Nutt. Cf. Legends of the Holy Grail. Lond. 1902, 

pp. 48, 49. 
Helinandus. Ibid., p. 28. 

„ 67. Baring-Gould. Cf. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 
pp. 617-624 (quoted from Mrs. Cooper-Oakley). 

„67. Bergmann (F. G.). The San Graal. Lond. 1870, 
pp. 12-28. 

„ 69. Figs. 155-158, 160-162, 164 (B.); 159, 163 (S.). 

„ 71. Figs. 165-168 (B.); 169-171 (M.M.). 

Crescent Moon. According to Mrs. G. F. Watts, "In 
early Christian symbolism the crescent moon was the 
symbol of heaven." This is perhaps the explanation of 
the frequent appearance of a crescent at the summit of 
St. Grail watermarks. Cf. Figs. 172, 174, 176, 183, etc. 
See also p. 32. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

245 

Five rays. An immense number of St. Grails are decorated 
by 5 rays, thus :— 

Dr. Wynn Westcott states that " Light is referred to 
the number 5," but 5 has so many meanings that it 
is dangerous to select any special one among them. 
The contents of the Holy Vessel were said to be pure 
light, and the Fleur de lys seen in Figs. 175 and 182 
doubtless symbolised this. In Figs. 185 and 186 the 
objects at the summit appear to be flames. Figs. 191- 
204 are all taken from a single book—Greenham's 
Works, 1605. They are reproduced in their natural size. 
In Horœ Mysticœ (Lond. 1908) Miss Gregory quotes 
an extract from " Hermes Trismegistus " : " Having 
filled a great Cup, of this He sent down giving a herald 
and commanded him to proclaim to the hearts of men 
these things : Baptize thyself who is able into this the 
Cup, which is believing that thou shalt return to Him 
Who hath sent down the Cup. As many then as 
understood the proclamation and were baptized with 
The Mind these partook of the knowledge and became 
perfect men, having received the Mind. . . . This 
then is the science of the Mind, the inspection of divine 
things and the recognition of The God—the Cup being 
Divine." 

The 5 rays shown in the figure herewith may 
perhaps symbolise the 5 transformations of the Graal. 
These, says Mr. Waite, " are analogous to the 5 natures 
of man." I don't quite understand what are these 
" 5 natures," but possibly the reader may. 

p. 78. SS Handles. Cf. Isis Unveiled, ii. 449. 

 246 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

p. 77. A Fish. "The symbolic fish upon the table conveyed 
to the warden the title of Rich Fisher, and it is in this 
sense—that is to say, for the same reason—that the 
Saints become Fishers of Men " (Hidden Church of Holy 
Graal, Waite, p. 497). 

„78. Romaunt of Rose. Cf. Dante, p. 83. In his Clef de la 
Comédie anti-Catholique (Paris, 1856) Aroux states that 
the Rose signified " L'Eglise Albigeoise et sa doctrine la 
St. Grail, le vase parfait ou le Temple transformé en fleur 
mystique ; de là, F immense vogue du roman de Guillaume 
de Loris" (p. 31). 
Chaucer. R. of R., lines 674-684. 

„ 79. Figs. 215, 216 (B.). 

Rose. In The Fairy Queen Spenser refers to " that daintie 
Rose "— 

" Eternal God in His Almighty powre 
To make ensample of His heavenly Grace 
In Paradize whylome did plant this flowre." 

(Book III. Canto v.) 

„ 80. Dante. Cf. Paradiso, xxx. and xxxi. 

„ 82. Li parlar. Cf. Luther's Forerunners. Lennard, Lond. 

1624, p. 44. 

Lollardry and Education. Dr. J. Gairdner tells us that the 
Lollards " formed illicit conventicles, kept schools, wrote 
books, and held disputations " (Lollardy and the Reforma 
tion, i. 47). 

First French Bible. Cf. Berard, pp. 121, 165. The date 
given by Berard is obviously wrong. The British 
Museum has editions of [1510?] 1521, 1530, 1531. 

„ 83. St. Catherine. Cf. Chambers'1 Encyclopedia, art. St. C. 

Figs. 227, 228, 229 (S.); 230 (B.); 231, 232 (M.M.). 

„ 84. Figs. 233, 234 (B.); 236(8.)· 

Tates mark. Fig. 235 is reproduced from an essay by 
Mr. Lewis Evans. Mr. Evans now informs me that his 
reproduction was inaccurate, and that Tates mark was 
a star within a double circle. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

247 

p. 85. Basilius. Cf. Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 42. 

Agrippa. Cf. In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom. 
F. Hartmann, M.D., Lond. 1890, pp. 36, 37. 

86. Combachius. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, p. 182. 
Sendivogius. Ibid., p. 182. 
another. Ibid., p. 180. 
Hallam. Cf. Introduction to Literature of Europe, i. 

„ 87. concealing. Cf. The Story of Alchemy. M.M. Pattison- 

Muir, Lond. 1902, p. 36. 
horrid metaphors. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, p. 237. 

„88. Valentine. Cf. Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 13. 
St. Grail = stone. Cf. Nutt, p. 14. 

„89. Flammei. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists. 

"Our art," says one. Cf. Story of Alchemy, p. 32. 
another. Ibid., p. 30. 
Paracelsus. Ibid., p. 14. 

„ 90. Sendivogius. Cf. Story of Alchemy, p. 29. 
„91. Agent Love. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists. 

,, 92. Oh, foolishness. Ibid., p. 174. 

Valentine. Cf. Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, pp. 33, 51. 

„ 93. I dare affirm. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, p. 29. 

„ 94. Waite. Cf. Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers, p. 33. 
van Suchten. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, pp. 100, 

101. 

„ 95. Encyclopaedia. Cf. Chambers, art. "Alchemy." 

„ 96. Waite, p. 14. 

„ 97. Ordinance, 1582. Cf. Briquet, i. 9. 

„ 98. QBL, "a means," etc. Cf. Numbers. Wynn Westcott, 

p. 12. 

,, 99. Reuchlin. "He believed that by treading in the footsteps 
of the Cabbalah he should ascend from symbol to 
symbol, from form to form, till he should reach that 
last and purest form which rules the empire of mind, 

 248 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and in which human mutability approaches to the 
Immutable and Divine" (History of Reformation in 
Germany. Ranke, Lond. 1905, p. 136). 

Picus. Cf. Introduction to Literature of Europe. Hallam, 
i. 209. 

Waite. Cf. Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah. 

Hiram. Cf. De Quincey, Essay on Rosicrucianism. 

Amen. "The word 'Amen' is from AMN, the initials 
of ' Adonai melekh ñamen,' meaning ' The Lord and 
faithful King'" (Numbers. Wynn Westcott, p. 13). 

ρ. ίσο. Stota. Cf. Golden Remains of Early Masonic Writers. 

Dr. Oliver, Lond. 1847, ii. 180. 
Tgaotu. Cf. Christ the Spirit. E. A. Hitchcock, New 

York, 1874, i. 413. 
Rossetti. Cf. Disquisition, ii. 228, 229. 

„ ιοί. Fig. 240 (P.). 

„ 102, 103. Figs. 243, 244, 245, 247, 249 (S.) ; all others (B.). 

„ 104. Fig. 242 (B.). 

Mackey. Cf. Lexicon of Freemasonry, p. 195. 

G. Cf. Early Hist, and Antiquities of Freemasonry. 
G. F. Fort, Phila. 1875, p. 484. 

Phoded and D. Cf. Francis Bacon and his Secret Society. 
Pott, pp. 306, 403. 

P. I am inclined to think that P. sometimes stood for 
Pax. 

D. Mrs. Pott says : "Di was a term for the Deity, from 
which we have Day (Dai)." Fig. 249 is sometimes to 
be found rising from a Bull's Head. I think that 
sometimes, as for instance when it appears upon a 
hand in Fig. 250, D. may simply have stood for Deo 
= For God. 

M. Cf. Secret Doctrine. H. P. Blavatsky, i. 384. 

„ 105. Aum. Cf. Lexicon of Freemasonry', p. 228. Isis 
Unveiled, ii. 31. 

,. 106. "Our art." Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, γ. 158. 
Ripley. Ibid., p. 243. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

249 

p. 108. C. AB. L. Cf. The Text Book of Freemasonry, anon., 

P- 237- 
„ 109. By three, p. 16. 

in. Love to be unknown. I was quite unaware when writing 
this sentence that "Love to be unknown" was the 
alpha of À Kempis' Alphabet of Instructions to his 
novices. His words are, " Love to be unknown, and 
to be accounted for nothing ; for this is more healthful 
and more useful to thee than to be applauded of men." 
Kettlewell states that this was thoroughly received 
among the Brothers of the Common Life, and that " the 
words ama nesciri had become proverbial among them." 
Just as the Lollards in England and the Waldenses in 
France were responsible for the founding of schools 
and the translation of Scripture into the vernacular, so 
in Rhineland do we find the Brethren of the Common 
Life contending warmly for a translation of the Bible 
into the German tongue. "They not only afforded 
facilities of education to the labouring class in opening 
and supporting schools of rudimentary instruction, but 
they sought to advance the cause of learning among 
the better class " (cf. Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers 
of Common Life. Rev. S. Kettlewell, M.A., Lond. 
1885). 

„ 112. 1403. Cf. The Story of Books. G. B. Rawlings, Lond. 
1901, p. 51. 

„ 114. Dr. Beard. Cf. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century 
in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. 
C. Beard, B.A., Lond. 1897, p. 59. 
St. Paul's Cross. Cf. Story of Books, p. 55. I. D'Israeli 
attributes practically the same words to Cardinal Wolsey. 
He adds : " This great statesman, at this early period, 
had taken into view its [Printing's] remote consequences. 
Lord Herbert has curiously assigned to the cardinal his 
ideas as addressed to the pope :—' This new invention of 
printing has produced various effects of which your 
holiness cannot be ignorant. If it has restored books 
and learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects 

 ί! 

250 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

and schisms which daily appear. Men begin to call in 
question the present faith and tenets of the church; 
and the laity read the Scriptures, and pray in their 
vulgar tongue. Were this suffered the common people 
might come to believe that there was not so much use 
of the clergy. If men were persuaded that they could 
make their own way to God, and in their ordinary 
language as well as Latin, the authority of the Mass 
would fall, which would be very prejudicious to our 
ecclesiastical orders. The mysteries of religion must 
be kept in the hands of priests—the secret and arcanum 
of church government. Nothing remains more to be 
done than to prevent further apostasy. For this 
purpose, since printing could not be put down, it were 
best to set up learning against learning ; and, by intro 
ducing able persons to dispute, to suspend the laity 
between fears and controversies. Since printing cannot 
be put down, it may still be made useful.' Thus, the 
statesman, who could not by a single blow annihilate 
this monster of all schism, would have wrestled with it 
with a statesman's policy," cf. Amenities of Literature, 
art. " The War against Books." 

p. 115. penalty. Cf. Story of Books, p. 55, and Curiosities of 

Literature, I. D'Israeli, ii. 19. 

Hallam. Introduction to Literature of England, \. 156. 
Durandus. Cf. Introduction to Symbolism of Churches. 

„ 116. Brussels Press. Cf. Story of Books, p. 117. 

„ 117. Wessel, etc. Cf. Dr. Beard, p. 47. 

Franciscans. " Francis taught his disciples to find their 
strength in prayer, but no religious meditations were 
to be excuses for idleness. Everyone who joined his 
brotherhood must work. The brother who knew no 
trade must learn one, for it was part of his simple 
creed that to labour was to pray" (St. Francis of Assisi. 
Frances E. Cooke, p. 34). " The reason why the Popes 
took such severe action against them has been found in 
the fact that their assertion of the duty of poverty 
implied a censure upon the licentious and prodigal life 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 251 

of the Papal court ; but in truth their doctrines were 
connected with various theological tenets which were 
directed against the very existence of the hierarchy, 
tenets which foretold the downfall of the existing 
system and the substitution of a purer and more 
spiritual order of things. Visionaries these men doubt 
less were ; but they lived in an age which was only too 
ready to carry theories into practice, and in practice 
their spiritualism proved the vigorous ally of Ghibellin- 
ism " (Wycliff-e and Movements for Reform. R. L. Poole, 
M.A., Lond. 1902, p. 24). 

Some idea of the enormously beneficent influence of 
the Franciscans may be gathered from the fact that no 
less than 124,000 of them fell victims to their zeal in 
tending the victims of the Black Death. 
St. Francis a Troubadour. Cf. Der heilige Franciskus 
•von Assisi, ein Troubadour. J. Görres, Strasburg, 1826. 

p. ii 8. Fratricelli, etc. Vaughan notes : 

Concerning these sects, see Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, vol. ii. 
pp. 1-18. The fullest account is given of them in a masterly Latin treatise by 
Mosheim, De Beghardis et Beguinalus. He enters at length into the discussion of 
their name and origin ; details the various charges brought against them, and gives 
the bulls and acts issued for their suppression. See especially the circular of John 
Ochsenstein, Bishop of Strasburg, cap. iv. § xi. p. 255. 

p. 119. Tide with us. Vaughan notes : 

Authority for these statements concerning the literature of the period will be 
found in Gervinus, Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen, part vi. 
§§ ι, z, 5- 

p. 120. Vaughan, i. pp. 184-186. 

„ 121. Printers'Devices. The bibliography of Printing amounts 
to the bewildering total of between six and seven 
thousand titles. On the subject of printers' marks, 
cf. Thesaurus Symbolorum ac emblematum, Friderici Roth- 
scholtzii, Nuremburg, 1730. Marques Typographiques, 
L.-C. Silvestre, Pans, 1868. Die Büchermarken, Stras 
burg, 1892; Zurich, 1895; Bas'e, 1895; Frankfurt 
and Mayence, 1896; Cologne, 1898. Marques Typo 
graphiques des Imprimeurs and Libraires An-versois. 

 252 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Antwerp, 1883. Early Dutch, German, and English 

Printers' Marks. J. P. Berjeau, Lond. 1866-69. 

Had space permitted I should have reproduced the 

following subjects :— 
Snake on Tau Cross. 
Heart and Rose. Motto, "In the prudent heart wisdom 

dwells." 
Crowned Hearts. Motto, "A humble and a contrite 

heart God will not despise." 
Sun shining on Plant being watered. Motto, " Until the 

things desired come." 
Swan and Cross. 

Two Pillars. Motto, "Piety and Justice." 
Sower. Motto, "His art in God." 
Clasped Hands and Heart. Motto, "By concord small 

things grow : by discord great things decay." 
Fruit Tree. Motto, " Fruit grows little by little." 
Device. Motto, "Possess your souls in patience." 
Crowned Star. Motto, "Stars point out the way to 

kings." 

Pandora. Motto, " Hope alone remained." 
Joshua and Caleb carrying Grapes. 
Arrow and Serpent. Motto, " Make haste slowly." 
Child riding on Eagle. Motto, "My hope is in God." 
Cock. Motto, " The vigilant custodian of things." 
Transfixed Heart, clasped Hands, and Thorns. Motto, 

" Out of hardships come peace and love." 

p. 121. Montet. p. 67. 

It is our duty. Ibid., p. 98. 

„ 122. W. Roberts. Cf. Printers' Marks. Lond. 1893, p. 3. 

„ 125. Waldo. Mrs Cooper-Oakley says Waldo was a Trouba 
dour. Cf. Traces, p. 121. 

Vaughan. Cf. Hours -with the Mystics, p. 66. 

Antichrist. Cf. The Waldensian MSS. J. H. Todd, 
1865, p. vi. 

Waldensian woman. Cf. Luther's Forerunners, 1624, 
Book IL, eh. iii., p. 38. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

253 

p. 126. a philosopher = Francis Bacon. 

Eagle. Cf. Nat. Hist. Lore and Legend. F. E. Hulme, 
p. 224. Also The Word in the Pattern. Mrs. G. F. 
Watts. 

" The representation of the Eagle," says Dionysius, 
"denotes the kingly, and soaring, and swift in flight, 
and quickness in search of the nourishment which makes 

strong, and wariness, and agility, and cleverness; and 
the unimpeded, straight, and unflinching gaze towards 
the bounteous and brilliant splendour of the Divine 
rays of the Sun, with the robust extension of the visual 
powers" (The Heavenly Hierarchy, sect. viii.). The 
Eagle when two-headed is the emblem of Omnipotence. 
There is reason to suppose it originally represented a 
mythical Eastern bird—the monstrous and all-powerful 
roc. 

„ 127. chameleon. Cf. Hieroglyphica Valeriani. 

De Bury. Philobiblon. Lond. 1903, pp. 12, 13. 

„ 128. Dante. Paradiso, e. xxxi. 

Squirrel. Cf. Nat. Hist. Lore and Legend, p. 174. 

„ 129. De Bury. Philobiblon, p. 83. 

„ 130. Figs. 285-291 (B.). 

Sara-isvati. Cf. Isis unveiled, ii. 409. 

 254 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

p. 132. Watts. Word in the Pattern. 

Phoenix. Cf. A New Study of Shakespeare. Lond. anon. 

„ 135. witch mania. "For two centuries and a half ... an 
epidemic terror seized upon the nations. France, Italy, 
Germany, England, Scotland and the far north suc 
cessively ran mad. ... In many cities of Germany the 
average number of executions for this pretended crime 
was six hundred annually, or two every day." Thou 
sands upon thousands of women, children, and animals 
fell victims. Cf. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular 
Delusions. Chas. Mackay, Lond. 1869, ii. 102. 

Dr. Beard. Cf. Ref. of i6th Cent., p. 298. 

Fanatics. Cf. Beard, p. 292. 

„ 136. Luther and schoolmen. Cf. Pioneers of Evolution. Ed. 

Clodd, Lond. 1897, p. 80. 
Booksellers. Cf. Beard, pp. 339, 341. 

„ 137. grossest lusts. Cf. The Lost and Hostile Gospels. 
S. Baring-Gould, Lond. 1874. 

„ 138. Quarles. Cf. Emblems : Moral and Divine. 
S. Lee. Letter to The Athenœum. 

„ 139. Erasmus. Cf. Hallam's Intro., i. 289. 

Luther. Cf. History of Reformation. J. H. M. D'Anbigné, 
Glasgow, 1845, i. 56. 

„ 140. Bruno. Cf. Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance. J.Owen, 
Lond. 1893. 

„ 141. Fama Fraternitatis. Cf. The Real History of the 
Rosicrucians. A. E. Waite, Lond. 1887. 

„ 142. Confessio. Ibid. 

Cockshying. Cf. The England of Shakespeare. E. Goadby, 
Lond. 1881. 

143. Fleur de luce, Lux. Cf. The Rosicrucians: their Rites 

and Mysteries. Hargrave-Jennings, Lond., chap. viii. 
Lux lucet. Cf. Gilly's Narrative, p. 257. 

144. Eliz. poet. Robt. Greene, Arbusto. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

2S5 

11 

150. 

11 

IS1· 

p. 145. Fig. 308 (S.); 310, 311 (B.). 

148. SÌhip. A ship also "typified the Holy Church of 

Christ." 

Plotinus. This and following quotation is from 
Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics, pp. 78 and 262. 

The Library. No. 9. 

Transference of Woodcuts. Mr. A. W. Pollard has a 
chapter on this subject in his Old Picture Books, Lond. 
1902. " Despite some efforts to prove the contrary, there 
can," says he, "be little doubt that the use of taking 
cliches of woodcuts, or of cuts engraved on soft metal 
treated in the same way as wood, was quite unknown 
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries " (p. 73). 

Anonymity. One reason for this practice was probably 
the same idea as that expressed upon his deathbed by 
the great mystic, John Tauler. " He begged him to 
make a little book of it, but enjoined him to conceal 
both their names, for the work was not theirs, but 
God's, who wrought through them. They were simply 
unworthy sinners " (John Tauler, The Friend of God. 
W. P. Swainson, p. 22). This mystic notion of the 
rights of authorship doubtless accounts for the apparently 
unprincipled way in which writers "borrowed" from 
each other without acknowledgment. Huss published 
some of Wycliffe's works as though they were his own, 
and other instances are abundant (cf. The Shakespeare 
Symphony). 

153. Mr. A. W. Pollard traces one block of this design from 
1585 to 1670, and has "no doubt that its original 
appearance was even earlier " (p. 75). 

155. Bacon. Cf. Adv. of Lear., 1640, p. 116; also Wisdom 
of Ancients (Pan). 

Campanella. Cf. Adv. of Lear. Oxford, 1640, Intro 
ductory "Judgments upon the Lo. Verulam." 

Jonson. Cf. Time Vindicated. 

156. Hell, c. i. 

157. Purgatory, c. xx. 

 4 

256 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

p. 158. Pan. Possibly the prayer of Socrates was expressed in 
some of these Pan emblems : "Beloved Pan, and oh! 
ye diviner ones who are about this place, grant that I 
may be good in my inner nature ; and that what I have 
of external things may be consonant with those inner 
things. May I deem the wise to be the only truly 
rich. And let me have only so much of gold as a 
provident man might enjoy and use." 
Gardner. Cf. The Vision of Dante Alighieri (Everyman's 
Library), p. 4. 

„158 and 161. verses. These are from Arnold's Light of Asia. 
„ 161. Boar. Cf. Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. "Artemis." 

„ 163. Owen, p. 383. 

Blanche. Cf. Colin Clout Explained. E. A. Hitchcock, 
New York, 1865, p. 152. 

„ 165. Laura, etc. D'Israeli observes of the Troubadours that 
though libertines in their verse they were " so refined 
and chaste in their manners that few husbands were 
alarmed at the enthusiastic language they addressed to 
their wives. . . . Love and its grosser passion were 
clearly distinguished from each other in their singular 
intercourse with their 'Dames.' The object of their 
mind was separated from the object of their senses; 
the virtuous lady to whom they vowed their hearts was 
in their language styled ' la dame de ses pensées,' a very 
distinct being from their other mistress ! Such was the 
platonic chimera that charmed in the age of chivalry ; 
the Laura of Petrarch might have been no other than 
the lady of his thoughts " (Curiosities of Literature, 
i- 445)· 

„ 167. Spenser. Sonnet, 74. 

„ 168. Heriot de Borderie. 
Clout, p. ii. 

„ 169. Doves of Diana. 

Quoted from Hitchcock's Colin 

In The Cathedral Builders Leader Scott 
refers to " the entirely Christian emblem of two doves 
pecking at a vase in which are heavenly flowers" 
(p. 80). She does not explain its meaning. This 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

emblem has been found on a Liège coin dated 1348. 
Count Goblet d'Alviella states that its origin " must be 
sought for in the symbolism of the worship paid in 
Asia Minor to the great Goddess of Nature venerated 
by the Phoenician population under the name of 
Astarte. The Doves played a prominent part in this 
worship either as personification of the Goddess, or as 
sacred birds reared in the Temple." It will be remem 
bered that Jesus scourged the dove sellers out of the 
Temple of Jerusalem. 

p. 170. Garden of the Wise. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists, 
P- 159- 

„ 171. Bird of Paradise. Cf. Nat. Hist. Lore and Legend. 
F. E. Hulme, p. 209. 

„ 172 and 173. Fish, etc. It will be noticed how these head 
pieces are composed of the same symbols. The bunch 
of Fish is so undecorative that the most sceptical must 
accept the suggestion that it had a symbolic meaning. 

„ 174. Aroux, p. 31. 

Serpent. Cf. Isis Unveiled, i. 157. 

„ 175. Qnarles. Cf. "Invocation." 

Sidney. Cf. Defense of Poesie. 

Cf. Dutch Republic, i. 86, 299, 300; iii. 194, 

„ 177. Motley. 
294. 

,, 178. Bacon. Adv. of Lear., book ii., chap. 13. 
Shakespeare. As Tou Like It, IL vii. 
Marston. Satyres. 
Massinger. Roman Actor, i. 3. 
Peele. David and Bathsheba. 

„ 179. Massinger. Renegado. 

Goat was also the symbol of fecundity. 
Sidney. Defense of Poesie. 

„ 181. " Standard writer " = Luckombe. Cf. History of Printing. 
Philosopher = Bacon. Cf. Adv. of Lear., book ix. 

 258 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

p. 182. Motley. Dutch Republic, i. 48. 

„ 191. cipher literature. Cf. Cryptography. F. E. Hulme, Lond. 
Rossetti. Dedication and vol. ii., pp. 195-197. 

„ 194. Paracelsus. Cf. In the Pronaos of the Temple. F. Hart 
mann, Lond. 1890. 
Novum Organum, book i., aph. cxx. 
Boyle. Cf. Natural Philosophy. Lond. 1664. 

„ 195. Provençal Cf. Anagrams and Echo Vers es. I. D'Israeli. 

„ 196. Ciphers and printing. Even in modern times printing 
has been employed as a vehicle for anti-papal cipher 
writing. "Before the union of Italy more than one 
attempt was secretly made to turn official papers and 
notes to propagandic uses. A custom-house regulation 
form was so spaced by the compositor that the initial 
words in every line, if read consecutively, were a 
declaration against the Papal claim to govern Rome" 
(Caxton Magazine'). 
Camden anagrams. Cf. Baconiana, 1904, p. 41. 

„ 197. Norton. Cf. Curiosities of Literature. 

„ 198. Gerson. Cf. The Reformers before the Reformation. 

E. de Bonnechose, Edin. 1844, p. 42. 
Rape, poisoning, etc. Cf. Dutch Republic, i. 73, 76. 

„ 199. Bull of 1487. Cf. Narrative of an Excursion to the 
Mountains of Piemonti W. S. Gilly, Μ. Α., Lond. 1825, 
App. No. 8. 

„ 200. Torquemada and anathema. Cf. Dutch Republic, i. 71, 
279. 

„ 201. Netherlands. Ibid., ii. 127, 320. 

Cromwell's Envoy. Cf. Gilly's Narrative, 227. 

„ 202. Inquisition. The audacity of the Inquisition went so far 
as to send a deputation to examine the orthodoxy of 
Pope Innocent XI. Even the tiara was not sufficient to 
shield from suspicions of heresy. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

259 

p. 203. 1733. Cf. Social England. H. D. Trail!, Lond. 1903, 

Ü. 102. 

Dominican. Cf. Curiosities of Literature. 

„ 204. Francis I. Cf. Skeptics of the French Renaissance. 
]. Owen. 

„ 205. Vanini. Cf. Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance 
J. Owen. 

„ 206. Hector. Cf. Luther's Forerunners. 

Licensers. Cf. Curiosities of Literature. 

„ 208. Informers. Cf. The Library. No. 30, vol. via. 

„ 209. Sismondi. Cf. History of the Italian Republics. 
Bacon. Cf. Advice to his Son. F. Osborn, Lond. 

„ 210. Buffon. Cf. Pioneers of Evolution. E. Clodd, Lond. 

Voltaire, Diderot. Cf. History of Civilisation. Buckle. 
Symonds. Cf. art. "Renaissance," Encyclopedia 
Britannica. 

„ 211. Baring-Gould. Cf. Curious Myths of Middle Ages. 
Hitchcock. Cf. Alchemy and the Alchemists. 

„ aia. "They wish." Cf. Dutch Republic, i. 412. 
1624 writer. Cf. Luther s Forerunners. 

Lo ! in the East. 
Light of Asia. 

These lines are from Sir E. Arnold's 

219. Chapel. Mr. C. T. Jacobi of The Chiswick Press has 
some notes on this subject in Gesta Typographica, 
Lond. 

Geometrical Symbols. It is significant that these curious 
marks are most abundant in the tombs of the churches 
in anti-Catholic Holland. Articles on the subject may 
be found in The Journal of the British Archeological 
Association, vol. xlix., 1893, PP· 45'54> vo'· !·> *894, 
pp. 40-44; and Notes and Queries, ser. 8, vol. ix., 
p. 409. But the only writer on the subject who 
displays more than the merest superficial knowledge is 

 26ο NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

G. F. Fort. In his Historical Treatise on Early Builders' 
Marks (Philadelphia, 1885), he states, "Of infinite 
variety and multiplied application were the marks in 
social domestic life during the period under considera 
tion. Families of lesser grade than the nobility adopted 
certain figures as symbols of race distinction in lieu of 
heraldry, and not infrequently had them carved on their 
houses, on sills, lintels, beams, etc." They were also 
worn as rings and seals. " Customs of this kind were 
in such great popularity and so closely identified with 
secret societies that synods of the church issued decrees 
against wearing them" (p. 90). "The circle occurs 
many times, and was doubtless carried up from pagan 
cosmogony, in which it symbolises the universe and 
divine puissance. In Christianity it portrayed Eternity " 
(p. 91). "A quadrate in both Christian and poly 
theistic dogmas typified the world and nature, such as 
the four quarters of the earth, four elements, four 
seasons of the year, and, distinct from the triangle, 
symbolised Christian Divinity" (p. 91). 

p. 223. Awake ! Quoted from Mr. Filson Young's The Wagner 
Stories. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES 

261 

„ 227. Auvergne. 
Cohendy. 

Cf. Note sur la Papeterie d'Auvergne. 

„ 228. Italy from Provence. Cf. The Tuscan Republics. B. Duffy, 

p- 255· 

Huguenot gate. Cf. Motley, i. 226. 

Aroux. Cf. Dante, p. 31. 

Schmidt. Cf. Hist, des Catharesì i. 33 ; ii. 5, 169. 

„ 229. New Theology. It is worthy oí note that the teachings 
of Thomas à Kempis and the Brethren of the Common 
Life were dubbed " The New Devotion." 
Clergy. On inquiry at the S.P.C.K. I am told the 
Church of England has practically no literature on 
Symbolism. 

„ 229. Bacon. Cf. Introduction, Wisdom of Ancients. 

p. 230. C. Murray. Cf. Guesses at Truths (Faith). 

Leader Scott. Cf. The Cathedral Builders. 

Valete = Fare you well, or Health be with you. Had I 
met with this mark earlier I should have included it on 
p. 40 as proof of my surmise that papermarks served 
frequently as signals of hope and encouragement. The 
nameless designer of "Valete," by his combination of 
the Fleur de Lys and the heart evidently implies that 
love and light will enable us to fare well. Probably, 
too, the rude square in which he has enclosed his 
kindly benediction is a sermonette to rule our lives 
upon the square. 

 L1 

APPENDIX 

263 

APPENDIX 

SINCE this book was in print there has been published The 
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal, its Legends and Symbolism con 
sidered in their Affinity with certain Mysteries of Initiation and other 
Traces of a Secret Tradition in Christian Times, by Arthur Edward 
Waite (London). The title of this work sufficiently indicates 
its contents. " If," says Mr. Waite, " there were custodians of a 
Secret Tradition at any time during the Christian centuries, there 
arises the inevitable question: Who were these mysterious 
wardens, and also where were they? Can we learn anything 
about them ? What was this strange power or influence working 
within the Church ? " And he answers that " within the Church 
Militant there had been always a little body which had pursued 
a peculiar path and had travelled a great distance, making no 
obvious sign. We are faced, however, by the apparent problem 
of two schools which seem to bear testimony in conflict, and there 
is the witness to both in the Graal literature. The first is that 
of spiritual alchemy, . . . the second is the testimony of Kabalism 
and Masonry." While, on the one hand, the existence of a 
traditional secret Church is an irresistible inference, Mr. Waite 
confesses that on the historical side this organisation is "the 
shadow of an hypothesis at best." This work will, I trust, pro 
vide Mr. Waite with some of his missing documentary evidence, 
and it will partially answer his preliminary query. It is impos 
sible to question that the men who designed the beautiful and 
complicated Graal emblems were among the Wardens of its 
Mysteries, nor should it be a surprise to find these high-minded 
priests of progress among the producers of Literature. 

Mr. Waite writes with a strong Roman Catholic bias. 
"When," says he, "we have considered all the crazes and 
heresies, all the pure, primitive, and unadulterated Christianities, 
being only human, and therefore disposed to gratitude, it is 
difficult not to thank God for Popery." His opinion, however, 
upon the heretical phase of the problem is disqualified by his 

own words: "If I have any view on the subject—and honestly I 
have next to none—they [the Albigensians] were perhaps the 
Protestants of their period, dealing in poisonous nostrums of 
pure doctrine, simple faith, Bible Christianity, and they circulated 
uncorrupted interpretations of the Word of God—all horrors of 
that spurious simplicity which takes the wayfaring man into 
the first pit. We who know that omnia exeunt in mysterium have 
recited long ago our Asperge, and have turned aside from such 
blasphemous follies " [!]. 

Yet Mr. Waite writes of the San Graal legends: "These 
quests are mirrors of spiritual chivalry, mirrors of perfection, 
pageants of the mystic life. They are the teaching of the Church 
spiritualised, if I may be pardoned such a term, and they offer in 
romance form a presentation of the soul's chronicle." Mr. Waite 
is perfectly entitled to thank God for Popery, but he must be 
well aware that Popery and the mystics were in constant collision 
with each other, and that the Court of Rome did not encourage 
the " spiritualisation " of its teaching. It was indeed this 
spiritualisation of dogmas, such as Transubstantiation and The 
Immaculate Conception, that indicated Heresy, and if, as Mr. 
Waite affirms, the San Graal legends are the teachings of the 
Church spiritualised, I fail to see how at the same time they can 
be "among the most Catholic of Literature, and that reformations 
have nothing therein " (p. 46). The truth probably is that the 
better elements of the Church were perpetually striving in secrecy 
to remove its abuses. One must draw a hard and fast line 
between the manifold beauties of Catholic belief and the amazing 
corruptions of Popery. Unhappily for mankind the Inquisition 
was die tool of the latter. 

"We must believe the evidence of our senses rather than 
arguments, and believe arguments if they agree with the 
phenomena. "—Aristotle. 

262 

 INDEX 

A, ιο8 

Acom, 182 

Advancement of Learning, 209 

Agrippa, Cornelius, 85, 86, 125, 203 

Albigenses, passim 

Alchemy, chap. vi. et passim 

Allegory, 21 

Allegory and the Reformation, 233 

Alphonse IL, 56 

"ALTRI," loo 

"•Ama ftesciri," 249 

"Amen," 99, 248 

Amoretti, 186 

Anchor, 28 

Anchor and Dolphin, 145 

Angel, 17 

Angel of the Annunciation, 54 

Anonymity, 151, 255 

Antichrist, 125 

Argus, Hundred eyes of, 132 

Aristotle, 136, 263 

Arnold, Sir E., see Light of Asia 

Aroux, E., 31, 57, 58» 61, 63, 78, 158, 

174, 216 

Arte of English Poesy, 177 
Artemis, 161-62 
Arthur, King, 120 
Ashmole, Elias, 195 
Atonement, 107 

Aurora, the Day Spring, 141, 163 
Avignon, early printing at, 113 
AVM, 105 
Axe, 40 

B, 108 

Bacon, Francis, 178, 181, 194, 196, 223, 

226, 229 

Bacon, Roger, 87, 195, 203 
Balzac, Honore, 24 
Baring-Gould, Rev. S., 67, 211 
Basket, 120, 122, 146 
Bat, 151 

Bear, 44, 152, 161 
Beard, Dr C., 114, I35, 139 
Beatrice, 165, 166 
Bees, 128 

Begbie, Mr Harold, 179 

Beghards, 118 

Béguines, ii8 

Bell, 50, 51, S3, 65, 242 

Benediction, 20 

Berard, A., 82, 227 

Bergmann, F. G., 67, 68 

Beza, 136 

Beziers, sack of, 37 

Biblia, pauperum, 112 

" Bice," ico 

Birds of Paradise, 153, 171 

Blanche, 165 

Blavatsky, H. P., 237, 241, 245, 248 

Block-books, 112 

Böhme, Jacob, 4, 96, 158, 163, 211 

Bon, C. Le, 12, 13, 236 

Borderie, Heriot de, i68 

Borneil, Giraud de, 57 

Boyle, Robt., 194 

Brahmans Rose of Paradise, 79 

Brethren of the Common Life, 116, 249, 

260 

Breton, Nicholas, 208 
Bridge Builders, 36 

Briquet, C. M., io, II, 50, 234 et passim 
Britannia, 217 
Broad Views, 216 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 111 
Bruno, Giordano, 6i, 135, 140, 158, 163, 

164, 205 

Buckle, T. H., 239 
Buffon, 2IO 

Bull's Head, io, 46, 68, 218 
Bury, Richard de, 129, 163 
Butterfly, 144, 145, 146 

C, 108 

Caduceus, 147 

Calvin, 136 

Camden, on anagrams, 195, 196 

Candlestick, 20, 21 

Castle, 68 

Cathari, 12, 13, 15,39, "8 

Cathedral Builders, Guild of, 25 

Catherine Wheel, 83 

265 

 266 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Catholicon, 116 

Chambers' Encyclopœdia, 95 

Chameleon, 127 

Chapel, 219, 259 

Charity, 104 

Charlemagne, King, 63 

Chaucer, 78, 165 

Cherubs, 174 

Chivalry, 62 

Christ, 107 

Church of Rome, 37 et passim 

Ciphers, 258 

Circle, 25, 260 

Circles, Three, 29, 30 

Circles, three semi-, 68 

Citeaux, Abbot of, 37 

Clef de la Comédie Anticatholique de 

Dante Alighieri, see Aroux 
Clover-leaf, 30 
Cock, 53, 140, 142 
Colombier, origin of, 29 
Comacine_ Masters, 25 
Combachius, 86 
Compound of Alchemy, 106 
Confessio Fraternitatis, R. C., 142 
Cooper-Oakley, Mrs, 216 et passim 
Copernicus, 204 
Cornelia, 141 
Corrozet, 84 
Courthope, Prof., 4, 233 
Crab, 145 
Crayfish, 145 
Crescent Moon, 244 
Cross, 17, 25, 28, 49, 123 
Cross, Maltese, 77 
Crown, 49, 50 
Cyphers, 190, 191, 258 

D, 102, 104, 248 

Dante, 27, 31, 61, 79, 100, 128, 156,157, 

163, 166, 228 
Dauphiney, Arms of, 171 
Dawn, 161 
" Decipherers," 208 
Defense of Poesie, 179 
Delalain, M., 123 
De Mysterio Magno, 211 
Descartes, 205 
Dialogues of Vanini, 164 
Diana, 61, 62, 94, 162, 167, see Artemis 
Diderot, 210 
"Dieu le garde," 13, 75 
Dieulouard, 13, 235 
Diodati, 129 
Dionysius the Areopagite, 235, 253 

Dolphin, 171 
DOM, I2I 

Dominicans, The, 37 
Dove, 29, 70, 78, 133 
Doves of Diana, 169, 256 
Doxologies, 121 
Drayton, Michael, 166 
Durandus, William, 3, 21, 22, 40, 41, 42, 
So, Si» 52, 53-«5, 121, 126, 237 

EAGLE, 126, 253 

Edict of Nantes, 39, 233 

Edinburgh Review, 225 

Electrotyping, 149 

Elizabeth, Queen, 167 

Emblems, Divine and Moral, Quarles, 

175 

Emblems, Reusner's, 16 
Encyclopedia Britannica, 66 
Erasmus, 136, 139 

Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 70, 88, 119 
Essai sur la gravure, Jansen, 235 
Eternity, circle of, 35 
Etude sur les Filigranes, Midoux et 

Matton, 235 

Europe, regeneration of, 211, 212 
Evans, Mr Lewis, 234, 246 

FAMA FRATERNITATIS, R. C., 141 

Faustus, 105 

Fénelon, Archbishop, 107, HI, 123 

Fidèles d'Amour, 6ο 

Filigranes, Les, see Briquet 

" First Folio," 150 

Fish, 27, 174, 246 

Five Rays, 245 

Flammei, Nicholas, 89 

Fleur de Lys, io, 30,49,70,104,133,142, 

143, 183 
Flowers, 121 
Foolscap, 243 
Fort, G. F., 248, 260 
Fortunate Islands, The, 168 
Four, 25, 26, 43, 68, 260 
Fox, 126 

France, cradle of Renaissance, 227 
Francis I., 39 
Francis Bacon and his Secret Society, 

233, 235 

Franciscans, 117, 250 
Fratricelli, 251 
Freemasonry, 106, 219 
Fylfot, 25 
Fylfot knot, 25, 237 

INDEX 

267 

G., 104 

Galileo, 135, 195, 205 

Geometrical Symbols, 259 

Gerson, on Papal Corruption, 198 

Ghent, Subjection of, 65 

Gilly, Dr Wm., 201 

Gnosticism, 24 

Gnotosolitos, 117 

Goat, 179, 257 

Goodman, Bishop, 209 

Green, Hy., see Shakespeare and the 

Emblem Writers 
Gregory IX., Pope, 38 
Greyhound, 156 
Guild Fools, 216 
Guild of Text-writers, 112 
Guilds of Rhetoric, 177 
Gutenburg, 115 

HALLAM, Henry, 6, 86, 115, 233, 

240 

Hamlet, 141 

Hand, 20, 43, 102, 103, 241 
Heart, 235 
Hecatomgraphie, 84 
Heckethorn, C.W., 58, 63 
Hedgehog, 42 
Helinandus, 66 
Henry VIIL, 77 
Heretical Church, 45 et passim 
Hess, 136 
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal, 246, 

262, 263 
HieroglypJuca Valeriani, 3, 44, 

iSi 

HIRAM, 99 

Histoire des Cathares, see Schmidt 
Histoire des Papeteries, 234 
History of English Poetry, 233 
History of the Inquisition of the Middle 

Ages, Lea, H. C, 45 
History of Reformation in Germany, 

Ranke, 248 

Hitchcock, Ε. Α., 191, 211 et passim 
Holland, 259 

Homines Intettigentiee, 117 
Honey, 127 
Honeysuckle, 127 
Horn, 63, 244 
Hound, 154,155 

H ours-with the Mystics, 117, 148 
Huguenots, 39 
Hulme, F. E., 16, 241, 257 
Huss, 135 
Hussites, 117 

I. C., 28, 29 

I. H. S., 27 

L S., 30 

Index Librorum Prohibitorum, 206, 

209 

Innocent III., Pope, 37 
Innocent VIII., 38 
Inquisition, The, 37, 38, 39, 135, 199, 

202, 258 

Isis Unveiled, 237, 241, 245 
d'Israeli, I., 250, 256, 259 

JACOB'S ladders, 18 
Jongleurs, The, 58 
Jonson, Ben, 155 

KABBALAH, 98-110,193, 195, 247 

à Kempis, Thomas, 116, 117, 249 

Key, 42 

Keys, 41 

King Arthur, 63 

King Charlemagne and his Peers, 63 

Knot, cross, 25, 237 

Krisch, Dr Wm., ιοί 

Kyd, Thomas, 141 

L, 108 

L. S. D., I2I 

Laborare est orare, 20, 145, 233, 250 

Ladder, i8, 237 

Lamb of God, 27 

Languedoc, 36 

Laragnais, de, 209 

Laura, 256 

Lea, H. C., 45 

Lee, Mr Sydney, 138 

Liberty, 97, 225 

Library, The, 150 

Licensers, 206 

Light of 'Asia, 34, 158 

Lily, 130 

Little Flowers of St Francis, 49 

Lollards, 5, 85, 117, 238, 246 

Louis XIV., 63 

Love Lies Bleeding, 170 

"Love to be unknown," HI, 249 

Luckombe, E., 187 

Luther, 135, 136, 139 

"Lux lucet in tenebris" 143 

M, 103, 104 

Mare, 104 

 268 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Mackey, Dr, 104 

" Manet Ultima Cœlo," 50 

" Many shall run to and fro," 195 

Marlowe, C, 105 

Marston, John, 178 

Mary, 24 

Massinger, Philip, 31, 178 

"Matura," 145 

Mazarin Bible, 115 

Mede, Joseph, 125 

Melancthon, 136 

Millennium, emblems of, 14, 157 

Milton, 39, 41, 141, 207 

Minnesingers, 176 

Montet, Edouard, 13, 121 

Moors, 38, 239, 240 

Motley, J. L., 65, 177,182,198,200, 201, 

212, 243, 260 
Mottoes (printers'), 252 
Mounts, Three, 68 
"Movendo," 124 
Mundane Egg, 104, 218 
Murray, Dr J., ιοί 
Murray, D. Christie, 230 
The Muses' ¡Booking-Glass, 178 
Mystères de la Chevalerie, 216 
The Mystical Mirror of the Church, 53 

NERO, 12 

Netherlands, 201 

New English Dictionary, ιοί, 210 

Newton, 210 

Nine, 166 

Norton, 197 

Notaricon, 99 

Nutt, Mr Alfred, 66 

OLIVE, 30, 130 

Oliver, Dr, ιοο 

Omnipresence, circle emblem of, 25 

Onfroy, H., 234 

Owen, Rev. J., 163 

Ox, 46, 241, see Bull's Head 

P., 102, 104, 248 

Palm, 16, 144 

Pan, 155, 158, 161, 256 

Pantheism, 158, 161 

Papal absolution, 198 

Papal curse, 200 

Papermaking, 9, n, 97, 233, 234 

Papermakers' workmen, 234 

Paracelsus, 89, 158, 194 

Parzival, 70, 119 

Fatarla, 13 

Paterini, 12, 235 

Pattison-Muir, Mr M. M., 89 

Peace and Plenty, 169 

Peacock, 130-132 

Pearls, 70 

Peele, George, 141, 178 

PEHIEH, ιοί 

Pelican, 27, 150, 238 

" Per ardua ad asirá" 46 

Perfect Ones, 46, 54 

Petrarch, 165 

Philobiblon, 112, 127, 163 

Philosophers, Emblem of, 83 

Philosopher's Stone, 66 

Philosophy, 163, 174, 175 

" Philosophy communicated," 154 

Phosphorus, 137 

Picus, John, 99 

Piety and Justice, ιοί, 104 

Pillars of the Porch, 106 

Pious and Learned Annotations upon the 

Holy Bible, 129 
Plotinus, 148 
Poblicans, 52 
Pollard, Mr A. W., 255 
Polleri, Francesco, 35, 97 
Poole, R. L., 251 
Pope, watermark of, 45 
Pott, Mrs Henry, 233 
Principia Typographica, 233, 235 
Printers' Devices, 251 
Printers' Marks, see Roberts, W. 
Printers' flowers, 181 et seq. 
Printing, 111-120, 182, 190, 204 et 

passim 

Provence, 36, 227, 228 eipassim 
Pythagoras, 19, 61, 193 

QuARLES, Francis, 40, 109, 137, 175, 
236 

R, 107 

Rabbit, 154 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 17 

Ramus, 204 

Rawlings, Miss Gertrude, 116 

Raymond, Count of Toulouse, 37 

Reformation, The, 135, 137 

Renaissance, The, 6,7,210,212 

Reuchlin, 6, 99, 113, 247 

Reusner, 16 

Reynard the Fox, 126 

INDEX 

269 

Richard Coeur de Lion, 56 

Ring, 84 

Ripley, G., 106 

Rise of the Dutch Republic, see Motley 

Roberts, W., 122 

Roland, 63, 65, 120, 215 

Romances of the Round Table, 63 

Romaunt of the Rose, 5, 60, 63, 78, 133 

Rome, Church of, 5, 14 et passim 

Rose, 43, 49, 7°, 79, 80, 81,103, 109-30, 

166, 246 

Rossetti, Gabriele, 6ο, ιοο, 191 
Rowbotham, J. F., 56, 57, 58 
Royal Masonic Cyclopcedia, 79 
Rudolf Agricola, 117 
Rutherford, John, 62 

SACHS, HANS, 4, 223 

St Bartholomew's Eve, 200 

St Francis of Assisi, 49, 117, 251 

St Grail, 5, io, 47, 65, 67, 71-78,97, 98 

132, 183, 215, 245 
Sanctus Spiritus, 78 
Sara-isvati, 130 
Scales, 26 

Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance, 163 
Schmidt, C., 44, 45, Φ 
Scissors, 2i, 22 
Scott, Leader, 230 
Scott, Walter, 14 
Sendivogius, Michael, 86, 90 
" Serere ne dubites," 182, 252 
Serpent, 19, 24, 25, 49, 174 
Servetus, 135 

Shakespeare, 21, 41, 77, 141, 178 
ShakespeareandtheEmblem Writers,\/tf 
Shell, 17 
SHÏ, ιοο 

Ship, 147, 148, 255 
Sidney, Philip, 175, 176 
Signes de nos Pensées, 145 
Sismondi, J. C. L. de, 209, 230 
Skalds, 176 

Smith, Richard, 167, 174 
Snail, 144, 146 
Snuffers, 21, 22 
Socrates, 50 
Solomon, 165 
Solomon's knots, 25 
Song of Roland, 63 
Sophia, 163, 164 
Sotheby, S. L., 233 et passim 
Spenser, Edmund, 141, 166, 167 
Spinoza, 158 
Spirit, 29, 174 

Squilla, see Bell, 52 

Squirrel, 128, 129, 130 

SS., 77, 78, 185 

Stag, 16, 150 

Star, 27, 31, 35, 49, 70, 239 

Stereotyping, 149 

STOTA, loo 

String of Pearls, 109 

Sun, 27, 35 

Swan, 50, 241 

Swedenborg, E., 106 

Sword, 40 

Symonds, J. A., 210, 227 

Syren, 79 

T, 103 

TAL, ιοο 

Taliesin ben Beirdd, 67 

Talisman, The, 14 

Talmud, The, 114, 203 

Tannhäuser, 167 

Tate, John, first English papermaker, 85 

TAU, 19, 49, 54, 68, 99, 133, 236 

Tauler, John, 255 

Templars, 14 

THA7U, 100 

Tkemura, 104 
Theorbo, 175 
Three, 24, 109 
Three Mounts, 102, 186 
Tiiurel, 67, 119, 167 
Torquemada, 135 

Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry 
andMediavalMysticism,zi6 etpassim 
Trefoil, 30, 108, 186 
Triangle, 30, 31, 236 
Trinity, 29, 31, 236, 238 
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, The, 

15 
Troubadours, 4, 5, 14, 36, 55-64, 67, 125, 

165, 176, 215, 216, 243, 256 
Trouvères, 176 
Truth, 166 
Twelve, 63 

UNICORN, 15, 16, 236 
Universities, Despotism of, 210 

VALENTINE, BASIL, 15, 85, 88, 92, 95 

Valerian, Peter, 3, 44, 151 

" Valete? 261 

Vanini, 135, 158, 163, 205 

Vas insigne electionis, 96 

 270 NEW LIGHT ON THE RENAISSANCE 

Vaughan, R. A., see Hours with the 

Mystics 

Vera Icon, 17, 70 
Vesalè, 209 
Vine, 28, 108, 128, 186 
Vita Nuova, 166 
Voltaire, 210 

WAGNER, R., 222 

Waite, Mr A. E., 94, 96, 99, 262, 263 

Waldenses,The, 5,11,12-13, 38,63,117- 

„19. 143, 174, 199-201, 220, 240 

Waldo, Peter, n, 63 

Watermarks, 3, 15, 40, 228, 231, 261 et 

passim 
Watts, Mrs G. F., 132, 237 

Weishaupt, Adam, 193 

Wessel, John, 117 

Wigston, Mr W. F. C., 132 

Will and Understanding, 106 

Wing, 41 

Witch mania, 254 

Wolf, 126, 157 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 249 

Wyclifie, John, 85, 165 

Wynn-Westcott, Dr, 238, 245, 247 

Y, 19, 20, 102 

ZOROASTER'S CAVE, 44 

TURKEULL AND SPEAKS, PBIKTEBS, EDINBURGH 

BT THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE 

SHAKESPEARE SYMPHONY 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ETHICS OF 
THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 

CONTENTS 

I. LONDON'S PARNASSUS—II. THE SWEETNESS AND GRAVITY OF THE 
DRAMATIC MIND—III. THE STATE OF LEARNING—IV. ECCLESI- 
ASTICISM—V. RELIGION—VI. EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE—VII. MEDI 
CINE AND PHYSIOLOGY — VIH. ELIZABETHAN AUDIENCES — 
IX. CLASSICISMS—X. THE WORDMAKERS—XL PROBLEMATIC 
MSS.—XII. MISCELLANEOUS SIMILITUDES—ΧΙΠ. ERROR, WIT, 
AND METAPHOR—XIV. TRAITS AND IDIOSYNCRASIES. 

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