Heinrich Khunrath’s Magnesia Catholica Philosophorum

v. The Harmonia analogica

The most exposed thing in the book is its Christology, and a reader should meet it knowing that Khunrath does not soften it and does not confine it to a corner.

It is announced at p. 30 as the third of his Tubae Veritatis and set out at full length at pp. 56–57. Magnesia and the Stone are the Servator and — suo modo, in their own manner — the Salvator of the greater World and of its fruits, vegetable, animal, mineral and metallic; ihsvh christvs is the Servator ac Salvator of the lesser World, that is, of the human race. Khunrath distinguishes the two Latin words and this edition keeps them distinct, Preserver and Saviour. He extends the comparison past the person to the Doctrina, Vita & Miracula, and writes & contra in body and margin alike: the analogy is to be run in both directions.

The suo modo of p. 56 is his only hedge, and he does not keep it up. At p. 57 the Stone is the Medicinischer HEILAND der grossen Weld flat; at p. 165 deinen Medicinalischen HEILAND der grossen Weldt with no qualification at all; and at p. 168 the qualification is not a hedge but an intensification — the Stone is the true Medicinal Saviour of the great world noch in statu humiliationis aut exinanitionis, still in the state of humiliation or emptying-out. That is the kenosis of Philippians ii, applied to the matter in the flask.

At p. 138 the claim is at its strongest, in body and margin together: in the whole nature of things there is no matter in which the analogical harmony with ihsvh christvs — & contra — so properly agrees as in this one. At p. 139 he reads John v. 39, search the scriptures … they are they which testify of me, in symbolico intellectu, and applies it to the book of Nature: Magnesia Catholica is she who testifies of Christ naturally and universally.

But the figure is not confined to those pages. It opens at p. 33, where Magnesia is the true likeness of the child ihsuh out of the divine great world-book and Herod — who also sought the child diligently, and not to the same end — is the type of the bad seeker. It governs the Conclusion. The Beschluß at p. 165 puts Simeon’s canticle into the mouth of the chymist: HERR / Nun lessestu deinen Diener … in friede laboriren … dann meine augen haben deinen Medicinalischen HEILAND der grossen Weldt … gesehen, with Luc. 2. vers. 29 in the margin. Simeon is then made the type of the Philosopher who knows before he has seen a miracle done (pp. 166–167). And the treatise closes on the identification at p. 184: Magnesia is the symbolical likeness, out of Nature, of ihsvh of Nazareth, the Son of God and of Mary.

He is not naïve about what this will cost him. He expects to be damned als blasphemum and says so (p. 140), and his defence is the appeal to the Fathers at pp. 140–141: venerable Antiquity explained the articles of the faith by similitudes drawn from natural things; you praise them for it and do it yourselves in the pulpit and in print; do not cry me down for doing the same. He offers to prove the method out of the divines of Papists, Lutherans and Calvinists alike. Whether the analogy is pious or blasphemous was, in 1599, exactly the question; Khunrath answers it by pressing on.