The Magic Circle of Rudolf II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague [Hardcover]

A few years back, almost by accident, I got a chance to travel to Prague. I knew very little about the city other than that it was the place where Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler crossed paths and the events that would lead to the development of the Laws of Planetary Motion were set in motion. As I got to know the city, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how impressive and interesting it is. And how, at the turn of the sixteenth century, Prague was the intellectual center of Europe.

The person who can be credited with making Prague the intellectual center of Europe is the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. In this fascinating book, Peter Marshall describes the rise and fall of this monarch--how he briefly made Prague the crown jewel of Western Civilization in the midst of religious and political upheaval and then lost it all in the madness of his old age.

Born in Eastern Europe, raised in Spain and returning to the East to rise to Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf's life is a reminder of how inbred the royal families of Europe were at this time. This may speak to why so many members of Rudolf's family were clinically insane and why Rudolf himself often seemed touched by depression and madness. And yet, at his peak, his fascination with alchemy, art and science made him gather to himself some of the greatest minds and talents of Europe. His extensive libraries and galleries contained some of the most important books, gadgets and works of art in existence. For awhile, he was able to protect these from the war and turmoil brewing around him but, on his death, his collection was quickly and sadly dispersed.

Mr. Marshall does quite a good job of telling Rudolf's story and that of the intellectuals he gathered around him. If he spends a lot of time on occult figures, alchemy and astrology; well, that is to be expected considering Rudolf's nature and that of his time. The fact remains that some of the most important foundations of modern science came out of Rudolf's laboratories and observatories. And Marshall does point out these important links. Anyone interested in these foundations and the transition of the Middle Ages to the modern world would find much to like in this book.

I first heard about Rudolf II while reading To Have And To Hold: An Intimate History Of Collectors and Collecting. Even though Rudolf II was Holy Roman Emperor, king of the largest empire in Europe, that part of his life is the least interesting and thankfully The Magic Circle of Rudolf II does not spend too much time on politics. Rudolf, too, would have been pleased.

Rudolf II was one of the world's greatest collectors, he spared no expense in finding rare and exotic objects from around the world to fill his castle in Prague. He never married, had a stable of 'imperial women', rarely left his castle or appeared in public, had little interest in the affairs of state - all of his energies were in his collections and in the occult sciences of astrology and alchemy. He was so wealthy and patronized so many artists and intellectuals that Prague became Europe's late Renaissance cultural capital for about 30 years around the turn of the 17thC.

Peter Marshall does a wonderful job of revealing this eccentric and fascinating monarch, and the amazing artists and thinkers that were a part of his world. It was because of Rudolf's patronage that foundational scientific works were created, such as Kepler's "New Astronomy". Although Rudolf's ultimate quest was to find the Philosopher's Stone, a legendary alchemy rock that made one immortal, he inadvertently helped lay the foundational stone of the scientific revolution by allowing many great minds to flourish in an atmosphere of freedom and creativity. It is called the "Rudolfian age", comparable to the "Elizabethan age" (Elizabeth I of England).

History has not been kind to Rudolf, only in the past 50 years or so has his life been been re-examined beyond the lens of his political failures, and his contributions to the arts and sciences been given their due credit. His life story will be appealing to anyone with an interest in collecting, astrology/alchemy, science history, European history, and eccentric monarchs. Marshall writes in a very readable style and brings life and color to the period, people and events.

As one other reviewer has already remarked, Rudolf II has been very poorly covered in the historical literature. This is all the more surprising given his quite astonishing contribution to cultural history through his very wide-ranging patronage. Marshall's book goes some way to addressing this problem by being the only major contribution in recent times to the biography of this important late Renaissance emperor. Marshall's book intends to be a reasonably in depth exploration of the scientific interests of this emperor, although he does touch on some aspects of the more general cultural patronage. It is a shame he does not explore this at more length, as it is as important a feature of Rudolf's mentality as the scientific interests and is motivated by exactly the same concerns. One is best advised to read the exhibition catalogue 'Rudolf II and Prague' in order to fill out this part of the emperor's personality and, by the way, to get a much better understanding of the full spectrum of Rudolf's society from the city of Prague itself to the politico-religious concerns tearing the Empire apart.

This is a very unevenly written book. It appears to have been written as a series of independent chapters written in isolation from each other, and there is a worrying amount of information recapitulated from one chapter to the other, but introduced in the succeeding chapter as though one hadn't read it earlier. Some of the material has been written in a sensationalistic, historical novel kind of way (some of it quite entertaining) rather than as a work of historical scholarship. The bibliography seems to attest to a reasonably wide reading of esoteric materials of the late Renaissance, but the historical foundation material is often from generalist texts and one does not get the impression that the book is a profound meditation on the world, motivations and culture of Rudolf II. A surprising amount of the book, for example, is pure biographical material (of Rudolf himself, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, etc) without critique and is the kind of information one could as easily have got from Wikipedia. A work of historical criticism should be more deeply critical than this often purely descriptive book tends to be.

Marshall's view of Rudolf is skewed by his desire to make Rudolf and his father Maximilian II into non-religious proto freethinkers. There is no doubt that Rudolf and Maximilian felt deeply ambivalent about their positions as leaders of the temporal sphere of a world which included (for the first time in history) Catholics and non-Catholics. This ambivalence drove them into conflicts not just with the Papacy but with Protestant forces as well. I remain unconvinced that Rudolf's fascination with esoterica represents any other than a completely normal type of Catholic religiosity of its time, one that saw no real conflict between Hermetical teachings, Egyptian mysticism and so forth and Catholic faith. To suggest otherwise would make Leo X (he shared some of the same interests, as did a string of other Humanist Popes) before Rudolf and the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher after Rudolf also into freethinking non-Catholics. Marshall's desire to cast Rudolf as non-Catholic causes him to write some things verging on bigotry about the Catholic Church. Rudolf is far more interesting when considered within Catholicism than without; his brand of Catholic religiosity throws a fascinating light on the concept of Catholic religious expression at this critical time.

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