Johann Valentin Andreae

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all Christianopolis and Turris Babel (both 1619), with the Chymical Wedding (1616).

The jest of his youth

Andreae's first teaching is told as a play. In the Chymical Wedding the guests who boast of their learning are found too light, the humble man who doubts his own worth is chosen, and the true work is the death and raising of the royal pair, while most of the company is content to make gold; the story and the two manifestos beside it are told part by part on the branch of the Rosicrucians. He called the book a jest, and its moral is plain under the play: the remaking of the soul is the work, and gold is the by-work of those who want no more.

The fraternity set aside

When all Europe began to clamour for the brothers of the Rose Cross, Andreae answered with Turris Babel, the Tower of Babel. In its dialogues every voice is heard at once, believers and mockers, gold-seekers and the hopeful, each sure of what the brotherhood is, until the confusion is its own proof. The book's end gives his teaching: stop waiting for hidden brothers, and follow Christ, whose brotherhood is open to all and needs no vault, no cipher and no secret seal. The reformation the manifestos called for is to begin in each life, in faith shown by love and work.

The voyage to Caphar Salama

Christianopolis is that reformation drawn as a city. Its narrator sets out on the Academic Sea in the ship Fantasy, is wrecked, and is cast ashore on the island of Caphar Salama, the village of peace, where the city stands. He is examined before he may enter, for the city admits no idler, no quack and no deceiver, and it tests a stranger's life and conduct before his learning. Once admitted, he is shown everything, and the book is his account of it.

A city built for its work

The city is square, facing the four quarters of the world, walled and towered, with a round temple at its centre. Its farms and mills lie outside the walls; within, the workshops are set out by trade, and every citizen works, so the working day is short and no one is idle or worn out. No one keeps money of his own. What is made goes to the public stores, and each household draws from them what it needs; the people eat, dress and live simply, and count no honest craft beneath them.

Its craftsmen are educated people and its scholars work with their hands. That is the city's rule: learning cut off from making grows proud and empty, and making cut off from learning stays blind.

The college at the heart

At the heart of the city is its college, and there the study of nature is done by hand. It has a library and a printing press; a laboratory, where the properties of metals, minerals and plants are tested by fire, not for gold but for knowledge and for medicine; a pharmacy; a hall of anatomy, where the body is opened to be understood; a hall of natural history, with pictures of the creatures of the earth, the sea and the air; and a tower of mathematics with instruments for the heavens. Music, painting and the mechanical arts have their rooms too. Nature is God's other book, and to study it with eyes and hands is a form of worship.

The schooling of the young

The city takes education to be its first care. Its children are given to the public schools, boys and girls alike, and taught by teachers chosen for their age and character rather than their need of a post. They learn languages, logic, arithmetic, music and the heavens, with piety through all, and they learn by sight and by hand as well as by books. The aim is not a scholar who can dispute but a person who knows, makes and loves well.

A society of friends

After Christianopolis Andreae drew up a plan for a real fellowship, a Christian society of learned friends. Its members are bound not by oaths or secrets but by love, each bringing his own gift, in scripture, in morals, in the arts of government, in the study of nature or in the crafts, to the service of the others and of the Church. It is the city's pattern on a small scale: learning and faith joined, knowledge shared freely, and every gift put to common use.