John Dee is a well-known figure in the Tudor intellectual landscape. In particular, his engagement with occult philosophy and its relationship to the mathematical sciences has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention over the last forty years. It is quite surprising, therefore, to learn from the publisher's blurb that Glyn Parry's new book is actually “the first full-length biography of Dee to be based on primary historical sources.” This material has enabled Parry to develop a highly detailed narrative that sheds new light on Dee's career and its relevance to the cut and thrust of late Renaissance and Reformation politics. At the same time, Parry provides fresh evidence for exploring the complex relationship between religion and magic in this period, a linkage which was essential to the conduct of Dee's eventful life.
As its title indicates, at the heart of this book is Dee's notorious identity as an “archconjuror.” The charge was first made against him in 1555 when he cast horoscopes for Queen Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth, at the latter's request. To have such a reputation wasn't necessarily bad, since this was a period when magic and related arts were enthusiastically patronized by members of the European elite. In other words, there were potential financial and social rewards to be gained by assuming the role of magus, even though it was always a high-risk pursuit. Parry explores many facets of Dee's career through the prism of occult philosophy, which I would loosely define as a body of magical knowledge based on the harnessing of secret or hidden powers operating in the cosmos (Parry himself hazards no such definition). These occult powers included astrological influences and also the spirit of nature, which was central to alchemical speculation. What made occult philosophy controversial, however, was the role that intelligent spirits could play in the magus's activities. The question was whether the invisible beings involved were good angels revealing God's divine plan or evil demons coerced into executing the adept's commands. Dee identified himself with the angels, but this did not prevent detractors from accusing him of illicit magic. Parry shows that this charge of conjuring only gained momentum at times when he lost political patronage, while his status as a learned natural philosopher grew in proportion to the demands for his services at court.
For example, during the late 1570s and early 1580s, “Dee's occult philosophy became entangled with the politics of the Elizabethan Court as it struggled with a European crisis” (103). For a brief period, the outright Protestant faction at court (including Leicester) found that the advice Dee was offering could give support to their strongly anti-Catholic cause. Parry tracks the complicated relationship between Dee's “imperial” writings and the fluctuating demands of his patrons as they tried to persuade the queen to act decisively against the Habsburgs. Parry shows that Dee's imperial vision was intimately bound up with his occult philosophy, including his practice of angelic magic. We learn that Dee's advice to Elizabeth for recovering King Arthur's former “British empire” in Europe and America was revealed to him by angels, her destiny also predicted through interpreting the movements of the heavens. The alchemical search for the philosopher's stone added a further dimension to this hoped-for recovery. In sum, Dee believed himself to be an agent for the unfolding of God's divine plan, an apocalyptic vision in which Elizabeth was to bring unity and peace to Christendom as a Last World Empress. Unfortunately for him, the political situation changed, his prophetic vision was no longer useful to Leicester, who excluded him from the queen's counsels, and there was no immediate prospect of material recompense.
This episode shows in microcosm the kind of difficulties that Dee continually confronted. One fundamental problem was his lack of money, so that he spent much of his life in pursuit of court patronage, which for the most part passed him by. Parry highlights the stark contrast between Dee's exalted belief in the value of his counsel and the meager rewards that he actually received. One reason for Dee's conspicuous lack of material success that Parry identifies is his political naivety (or sheer bad luck?). For example, his friendship with the Catholic bishop Edmund Bonner crucially distanced him from Elizabeth and her Protestant supporters at the beginning of her reign. Another reason Parry sees for Dee's numerous “patronage failures” (most embarrassingly at the court of Rudolf II) was that other adepts, such as his early rival John Prescott and his later collaborator Edmund Kelley, seemed more successful than he was and were correspondingly rewarded. In other words, Parry argues it was not his reputation as a conjuror or a magus as such that made Dee's life difficult but the fact that “he had too many rivals in magical learning and service, both in Europe and at the Court of Elizabeth I” (272).
Parry's book is too rich in detail to do full justice to its findings here. Indeed, it is so densely argued that readers who are not experts in the field could at times be in danger of losing track of events. It might have been helpful, for example, to offer a brief chronology of the most significant dates as a frame of reference for the wealth of evidence that is such a feature of this book. Also, I for one would have preferred a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources rather than a summary of “further reading” and chapter endnotes. Despite this disappointing omission, however, Parry's book should become essential reading not only for Dee scholars but also for anyone seeking new insights into the competitive world of Elizabethan power politics.
