John Dee
John Dee (1527-1608) was an English mathematician, astrologer, and natural philosopher whose diverse contributions significantly impacted the intellectual landscape of Renaissance England. Born to a successful merchant family, he excelled academically at Cambridge University, where he developed a deep interest in mathematics, navigation, and astronomy. Dee became a prominent figure in scientific circles, known for his influential lectures and for introducing modern cryptography to England. He played a vital role in England’s exploration efforts, advising explorers on expeditions that aimed to establish trade routes and discover new passages to the East.
Despite his accomplishments, Dee’s fascination with astrology and his connections to magical practices made him a controversial figure, often subject to suspicion and charges of necromancy. Throughout his life, he maintained a complex relationship with both scientific inquiry and spiritual exploration, engaging in angelic communications through his scryer, Edward Kelley, in a quest for deeper knowledge. Dee's writings interlinked astrology, mathematics, and natural philosophy, contributing to a broader Neoplatonic understanding of the universe during a time when such interdisciplinary approaches were less common. His legacy remains one of an enigmatic scholar whose work bridged the gap between the mystical and the scientific, influencing various fields including physics, music, and philosophy.
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John Dee
English scientist, mathematician, and scholar
- Born: July 13, 1527
- Birthplace: Tower Ward, London, England
- Died: December 1, 1608
- Place of death: Mortlake, Surrey, England
Arguably the most influential astrologer in Renaissance England, Dee had an extensive education in continental Europe that enabled him to bring to England developments in cartography, navigation, mathematics, astronomy, and cryptography. His practice with alchemy and astrology made him a regular consultant to Queen Elizabeth I, even as these same interests exposed him to charges of necromancy.
Early Life
John Dee was the son of Roland Dee, a successful merchant of fabrics and textiles during the reign of Henry VIII, under whom Roland was employed. In 1542, Dee entered St. John’s College at Cambridge University and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the traditional curriculum, which included the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the quadrivium, or scientific arts (astronomy, geography, music, mathematics). He was a distinguished student, receiving the bachelor of arts degree and a readership at Trinity College in 1546. Dee studied mathematics and navigation intensively, and in 1548, he received the master of arts degree, also from Cambridge.
With the ascension of the Catholic Queen Mary I in 1553, Roland Dee was indicted by the Privy Council and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London, presumably because of his close ties to Protestant reformists and to sympathizers of the late king Edward. John Dee was also arrested by Mary’s examiners in 1555, on charges ranging from necromancy (conjuring, magic, sorcery) to conspiracy with Elizabeth (Mary’s rival). Dee was ultimately acquitted of all charges, and one biographer has even suggested that Dee subsequently worked closely with Bishop Bonner, Mary’s most ardent and lethal persecutor of Protestant sympathizers.
Life’s Work
In 1547, Dee took his first of several trips to continental Europe, where he regularly sought the acquaintance of cutting-edge authorities on mathematics, navigation, astronomy, and natural magic. At the University of Louvain (now in Belgium), Dee became acquainted with Flemish cartographer and geographerGerardus Mercator, maker of terrestrial globes and navigational maps.
England was the regular beneficiary of Dee’s travels, since he often shared his intellectual findings in the Low Countries with his associates, some of whom were employed (after 1558) by Queen Elizabeth. Dee’s discovery of the works of Trithemius in 1562, for example, effectively introduced to England the study of modern cryptography, a subject in which the queen took personal interest. Dee himself developed a reputation on the Continent as one of the leading scientific figures of the day. His lectures on Euclid, for example, were wildly popular and earned him an offer to join the faculty at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris.
Despite his popularity abroad, however, Dee’s accomplishments in mathematics and astrology were less warmly received in his homeland. Mathematics was sometimes regarded as a “magical” subject in England by persons who were suspicious of its grandiose claims, and Dee’s serious involvement in mathematics and astrology made him vulnerable to charges of necromancy. Dee himself regarded natural magic as a legitimate course of scientific study, and his own The Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara , published in 1570 in one of the earliest English translations of Euclid, lists several of the magical arts as derivative subjects of mathematics. Nonetheless, Dee’s reputation made him an ambivalently popular figure at court, and he was visited on more than one occasion by Queen Elizabeth herself, for whom he periodically cast horoscopes.
Dee’s role in England’s burgeoning campaign for North American colonization was considerable. Throughout the sixteenth century, exploration of the New World was dominated by Spain and Portugal. When England belatedly entered the scene, Dee’s previous experience with continental navigational theory, as well as his knowledge of cartography and mathematical modeling, was particularly useful. In the early 1550’s, Dee advised Richard Chancellor on his expedition through the North Sea, an undertaking financed by the Muscovy Company that resulted in a trade route stretching from England to Moscow. More important, Dee had personally instructed Martin Frobisher and Christopher Hall on their expedition to discover a northwest passage to China in 1576, an expedition that was fruitless in terms of its stated aim but which led the way for later English settlements in Canadian North America.
Throughout his lifetime, Dee ardently encouraged Queen Elizabeth to challenge Spanish predominance in the colonial sphere, and his Brytanici imperii limites (English translation, 1995), presented to the queen in 1577, went so far as to suggest that the Americas had been discovered centuries before by King Arthur.
In 1583, Dee relocated his entire family to Kraków, Poland. Many reasons have been suggested for Dee’s sudden move, such as the idea that Dee was acting as a foreign spy for the queen. On August 1, 1584, Dee left Kraków for Prague, where he incurred the suspicions of Rudolf II , the Holy Roman Emperor. Rudolf ultimately banished Dee from the empire, whereupon Dee took his family to Trebon, a small town in southern Bohemia. During this period in his life, Dee carried on an intense and somewhat inscrutable relationship with Edward Kelley, his personal scryer, that is, a person who acts as a medium between the spiritual and physical worlds. Dee’s diary recounts at length a series of angelic conversations carried out through Kelley as medium, many of them centered on Dee’s attempt to recover the original language spoken by Adam before the confusion at Babel.
Dee returned to England in 1589 to find his home ransacked and his library pillaged. After several unsuccessful petitions to the queen for a bishopric in Winchester, Dee accepted a wardenship in Manchester, a position that effectively removed Dee from his former position of influence in the court. Dee faced periodic charges of necromancy and illegal conjuring until his death in 1608.
Significance
Although Dee’s reputation as an astrologer and natural magician has endured, it is important to realize that he was also an extremely accomplished mathematician, and Dee himself (like most of his contemporaries) would not have considered astrology and mathematics to be discrete subjects. In 1558, for example, he published Propaedeumata aphoristica (John Dee on Astronomy , 1978), a work that explicitly connects the study of astrology and mathematics by arguing that the universe is structured mathematically and harmonically. In this work, as in several of his others, Dee followed the theories of previous natural magicians, such as Proclus (c. 410-485) and Roger Bacon (c. 1220-c. 1292), who also considered magic, astrology, and mathematics inextricably linked parts of a unified natural philosophy.
In effect, then, Dee greatly contributed to the propagation and dissemination of Neoplatonic theories about the universe in Renaissance England. The influence of his numerous writings on astrology and mathematics extended to subjects as wide-ranging as physics, music, philosophy, optical theory, and mechanical engineering. His published work reveals the Renaissance’s theoretical basis for connecting these different areas of scholarship, an interdisciplinary endeavor that stands in sharp contrast to the modern academic preference for disciplinary specialization.
Bibliography
Clulee, Nicholas H. John Dee’s Natural Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1988. Analyzes Dee’s theories on mathematics, metaphysics, and natural magic in the context of Renaissance intellectual history. Several chapters devoted to The Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara. Includes several plates of Dee’s notes and sketches.
Deacon, Richard. John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer, and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I. London: Garden City Press, 1968. Well-documented, chronological account of Dee’s life. Includes bibliography and plates of early modern illustrations of Dee’s contemporaries.
Gouk, Penelope. Music, Science, and Natural Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999. Discusses the theoretical relationship in the Renaissance between science and natural magic as it was propagated by Dee and his contemporaries.
Harkness, Deborah E. John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Analyzes Dee’s transcripts of his angelic conversations and argues that they represent a coherent development of his natural philosophy.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Queen’s Conjurer: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. An engaging account of Dee’s life, more novelistic than academic, with particular attention given to Dee’s relationship with Edward Kelley. Includes plates of Dee’s writings and illustrations of Dee’s contemporaries.