THE QUEEN’S CONJUROR

One writer described Francesco Pucci as an ‘anglicised Italian pervert’.¹ He was certainly unorthodox. He was born in 1543 into one of Florence’s most powerful Catholic dynasties, but turned his back on a career in the Church in favour of the itinerant life of a merchant and intellectual. He moved to Paris in 1571 to study theology, thus was there during one of the formative events of the Reformation: the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, which saw the slaughter of thousands of French Protestants during one night of frenzied violence in August 1572. As a result, Pucci abandoned Catholicism and began to cultivate his own religious doctrines. He wrote a treatise entitled Forma d’una, Republica Catholica calling for a universal Christian republic ruled by an enlightened, divinely inspired council.²

In the early 1570s, Pucci went to study at Oxford. However, he was suspected of Catholic sympathies, and was expelled after taking his MA. He continued his restless travels, which took him to Antwerp, Basel, a London prison and finally Krakow, where he embarked on a series of disputes with the Jesuits. In the summer of 1585, his eccentric orbit became entangled with that of Dee and Kelley, which, unbeknownst to his new companions, set all three on a collision course with Malaspina.

Dee had by now managed to bring his entire family from Krakow to Prague, and had settled them in lodgings near the river in Salt Street, close to Bethlehem Square.³ However, soon after Jane and the children had arrived, Madimi announced that Dee and Kelley must immediately return to Krakow. The instruction was unwelcome. Jane had just given birth to another child, Michael, after a difficult pregnancy, and Dee was desperately short of money. He presented to the spirits a plea written by Jane, in which she described how the family had been forced ‘to lay such things as are the ornaments of our house, and the coverings of our bodies, in pawn’.⁴ But despite these entreaties, the trip back to Krakow went ahead.

They arrived amidst a series of whirlwinds ‘writhing up the dust with great vehemency on high and shooting forward still, and then mounting into the air’, which Dee considered portentous.⁵ The atmosphere in Krakow was equally disturbed. Following the arrest and execution of Samuel Zborowski, King Stephen Báthory’s relations with the Polish nobility had crumbled. His ambitious plans to merge Poland with Moscow and Transylvania to create an Eastern empire to rival Rudolf’s had come to nothing, and in the following weeks he was to withdraw from Krakow altogether, brooding on the ingratitude and intractability of his subjects at his country palace in Niepolomice. Once there he invited Dee and Kelley to perform an action in his presence, which they did, summoning spirits that condemned him as roundly as they had Rudolf.

In Krakow, Dee and Kelley began to develop connections with the Catholic church. Kelley had shown a sudden and unexpected interest in Catholicism while still in Prague. On 27 March, he had asked Dee for a copy of an action delivered in England, because he wanted to show it to the Jesuits. They were a leading force in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and Dee was astonished Kelley wanted to show them such a sensitive document. He insisted that he must ask permission of the spirits before showing ‘anything of theirs’ to ‘their enemy’. Kelley was furious, and tried to lock Dee in his study. Dee grabbed him by the shoulders, and called out to the household to witness the ‘violence offered unto me’.

Passions were eventually calmed and divisions repaired. Kelley never got the document he so desperately wanted. Even the spirits he summoned denied his requests. However, in Krakow he and Dee started to attend the local Catholic church of St Stephen’s, where on 22 April Kelley ‘received the Communion’ to Dee’s ‘unspeakable gladness and content’, and sought confession from a Jesuit priest for the ‘the crimes and grave errors of his entire antecedent life’.⁶ Constantly concerned about the state of Kelley’s soul, Dee was obviously happy to overcome his misgivings about the Jesuits’ political role if exposure to their religious devotions helped improve his skryer’s spiritual health. This episode is a strong indicator of his devoutness and religious tolerance, that he considered any form of holy communion better than none.

During this sparsely-documented and confusing period Francesco Pucci first flits into view in connection with some astrological work Dee was apparently commissioned to perform on behalf of a Florentine client.⁷ Within a month, Pucci had somehow managed to gain Dee’s trust and he followed the philosopher back to Prague. There, on 6 August, he was allowed to witness a spiritual conference, which was a privilege granted to very few. It proved an important action, as Uriel used it to give his angelic assessment of the Reformation.

Dee did not regard the angels as infallible. The only protection he had from deception was that the angelic messages came to him through a stone that he believed to have been blessed by God, and that they contained important insights on the way the world worked that had eluded him through conventional study. Thus, he must have taken Uriel’s assessment of the role of the Church very seriously.

Uriel’s first pronouncements had a distinctly Catholic tinge. The scriptures, the angel said, must be understood ‘by Ordinance and spiritual tradition’. This clearly meant that the Church was an important intermediary between God and humanity. The will of God was communicated ‘unto his Church taught by his apostles nourished by his Holy Ghost, delivered unto the World and by Peter brought to Rome by him, there taught by his successors.’ But the Church did not have a monopoly on divine truth. ‘Partakers of the heavenly visions and celestial comforts’ – people like Dee – had a role too.

Furthermore, Uriel agreed that the Pope may be capable of evil, but argued that those who claimed him to be an Antichrist ‘rise up amongst yourselves’. This, of course, was a reference to Protestants, and Uriel’s attitude towards them was less clear. ‘Luther hath his reward. Calvin his reward. The rest, all that have erred, and wilfully run astray,’ he said. This would suggest that Luther and Calvin, the founders of the Reformation, did not fall into the same category as other nonconformist theologians. However, it is unclear what ‘reward’ Luther and Calvin had received.

Whatever was to be made of Uriel’s statement, it was certainly heretical. Thus Dee had every reason to keep out of the way of the Catholic authorities, which were increasing their influence over Rudolf’s court daily. Malaspina had made it clear for some time that he was interested in Dee’s activities. As soon as Dee and Kelley returned from Krakow, he bombarded them with flattering invitations. He ‘desired passionately to enjoy some friendly conversations,’ Dee’s ‘fame’ having ‘so much and for such a long time been resounding round his ears.’⁸ Dee procrastinated. He did not dare refuse, but he had heard ‘bad reports’ that the nuncio ‘was preparing violence and laying an ambush for me.’ He was also ‘aware of the very great controversies obtaining between our Princes.’ In late 1585, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, had left England with an expeditionary force to help the Dutch fight the forces of Rudolf’s uncle, Philip II of Spain. England had formally allied herself to a Protestant coalition against Catholic Spain and the Hapsburg dynasty.

By the spring of 1586, Dee was back in Prague, where the pressure on him to meet the Catholic authorities intensified sharply. On 20 March, the ‘Most Reverend Lord Germanicus Malaspina became very severe,’ sending a ‘great nobleman’ to summon Dee. The reason for the change of mood was that Malaspina had been recalled to Rome, and no doubt wanted to have something to report to the Pope. But still Dee did not respond. Then, two days later, another intermediary appeared on Malaspina’s behalf: Francesco Pucci.

Pucci had apparently only met Malaspina a few days before. But his decision to act as the nuncio’s emissary, even if apparently in the interest of his friends, must have come as a shock to Dee. In the face of such pressure, he relented. At six in the morning on 27 March, Dee sent Pucci to the nuncio’s residence to say he would come that morning. The nuncio immediately sent a carriage to pick him up, but Dee would not take it, presumably fearing kidnap. He arrived with Kelley at Malaspina’s residence at seven. The greetings were cordial, and they were shown into a room where four chairs awaited them, one each for Dee and Kelley, one for Malaspina. The fourth, it soon emerged, was for Pucci.

The nuncio began with an eloquent address clearly aimed at luring Dee into indiscretion. ‘Who does not see how much the condition of the Christian religion is in distress and danger?’ he asked, half-rhetorically. If the King of Spain were to die, he doubted that ‘Rome and the Apostolic See’ would even survive – a sentiment that clearly, and perhaps to Dee alarmingly, echoed the opinion of some of the spiritual messengers. This much was obvious, but, despite ‘diligent enquiry’ and the efforts of the Pope and the Emperor, the authorities had failed to find a way of bringing ‘succour to the Christian religion in its so mournful condition’. So, what to do? The nuncio professed he had not a clue.

Therefore, if you, gentlemen, with whom (by a singular favour of God) blessed angels often are present, and to whom God himself reveals His mysteries, if you have received any counsel, or if you can think of any help to be employed against those evils affecting us all, I beg you to disclose them to me; I shall indeed gladly and with the greatest attention listen to you.

Dee would not be drawn by such silken words. He may have berated an emperor, but knew better than to challenge the Catholic church. ‘It is indeed true that iniquity still prevails, and that that chaste Bride of God, who has suffered great violence, is compelled to withdraw almost into solitude,’ he said. ‘Yet it is not in our hands to give counsel or to suggest remedies against such great evils and so prodigious a calamity.’ He admitted that ‘very great and very many mysteries and counsels of God are known to us of which all human talents conjoined could not invent or expect,’ but was pledged to keep them to himself. ‘We lead a monastic life, and it is with the greatest reluctance that we let such manifest evidence of our inward joy be known.’

Dee ended with ‘a few more civilities’ and a patriotic statement of loyalty to his Queen. The nuncio seemed satisfied with the reply, and expressed his gladness that they had at last had an opportunity to meet. Dee had apparently escaped the trap.

It seems to me [Kelley said] that, if one looks for a counsel or remedy that might bring about a reformation in the whole Church, the following will be good and obvious. While there are some shepherds and ministers of the Christian flock who, in their faith and in their works, excel all others, there are also those who seem devoid of the true faith and idle in their good works. Their life is so odious to the people and sets so pernicious an example that by their own bad life they cause and promote more destruction in the Church of God than they could ever repair by their most elaborate, most long, and most frequent discourses. And for that reason their words do not carry the necessary conviction and are wanting in profitable authority.

May, therefore, the doctors, shepherds, and prelates mend their ways; may they teach and live Christ by their word as well as by their conduct. For thus (in my opinion) a great and conspicuous reformation of the Christian religion would be brought about most speedily.

The impetuous Kelley then mentioned that there were ‘copious volumes’ recording the angelic revelations. The priest immediately demanded that they be handed over for inspection by himself, the nuncio and the rector of the Jesuits. Kelley refused, saying they were private, ‘kept in the custody of my friend, the Doctor’. The priest then suggested a ‘fraud and stratagem’ to get them, which Kelley rejected. The priest also wanted to know where they were getting their money from. The question was a pertinent one. Dee and Kelley had recently enjoyed a dramatic improvement in their material circumstances. They had moved into a new and much grander residence, the fortified medieval palace in Prague New Town owned by the court physician and pharmacist Johann Kopp van Raumenthal. It is now called the ‘Faust House’ in recognition of its historic links with alchemists and mystics.¹⁰ How had they come by such wealth? ‘Divine favour’, was Kelley’s answer, which apparendy did not convince the priest.

Eventually, Kelley became ‘so heated in his zeal’ that he challenged the priest to a sort of spiritual duel: they would both go to some ‘convenient and secret place’ and ‘each after his own manner, invoke Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth’. Whoever was guilty would be struck down by heavenly fire. The priest refused his offer. Dee was furious with the priest, shocked to find ‘so poisonous an egg’ ready to hatch at the centre of the Christian world. His anger increased when he heard that, on returning to the Jesuit’s College to see his confessor once more, Kelley was blocked by Francesco Pucci. Pucci apologised soon after, and Kelley forgave him, but Dee was by now convinced that the Italian was treacherous.

The spirits apparently agreed, because following Easter they staged – apparendy for Pucci’s benefit – a theatrical effect as compelling as the mechanical dung beetle the young Dee had engineered to ascend into the heavens at Cambridge.

Dee relates the story without comment, accepting what in hindsight appears to be an elaborate and ingenious charade mounted by Kelley to persuade Pucci that the incriminating books of mysteries demanded by the Catholic authorities had been destroyed.

It began at eight in the morning on 10 April, when Dee was in his study, a ‘small heated room, truly elegant and commodious’ at the top of a tower. He was joined by Kelley, who settled himself before a ‘new and very fine’ table, and Pucci, who sat on a bench which ran along a wall.

A spirit appeared which launched a scathing attack on human hubris. ‘You are ignorant. You cannot read,’ it said, referring to the Book of Nature that it had been the mission of the angels to restore through Dee. ‘You all have become gods and mighty giants, and you are full of the spirit of your father, the devil.’ ‘Arise then,’ the spirit instructed Dee. ‘Place before me the books and all that which you have received from me, and then you will learn what else I shall tell you and how, by one look. I shall destroy the eyes of your adversaries at the very time when they think they see most sharply’

Dee went downstairs, and fetched a large, white box filled with the volumes he had so meticulously written over the past four years. The spirit then commanded him to destroy them, having first removed the record of that day’s action. Dee did as he was told, ripping apart each of the twenty-eight volumes, dismantling ‘all the things which, from the first hour of our conjunction until the present hour, had been revealed and shown to us by God’s faithful’. He destroyed the book of the forty-eight angelic keys, written entirely in the angelic language; a ‘most clear interpretation’ on the use of the language written in English; one containing the ‘wisdom and science’ first revealed to Enoch; and a very short book, but the most precious of all, containing ‘the Mystery of Mysteries and the Holy of Holies’, which alone ‘contained the profoundest mysteries of God Himself and of the Almighty Divine Trinity that any creature will ever live to know.’ The spirit next instructed Dee to fetch the powder and book Kelley had discovered at Northwick Hill, which were reverently contained in a bag made of ‘black fustian’ cloth, secured like a purse with metal clasps. This command was so unexpected Kelley was ‘overcome with helpless amazement’. ‘Oh Lord,’ Kelley protested, ‘I did not receive these from Thee.’

After much persuasion by Dee and Pucci, Kelley reluctandy surrendered the bag, which was placed on the table next to the twenty-eight volumes. The spirit then commanded Kelley to place the volumes in the bag.

‘Now you, Kelly, will rise and you will remove the stones from the mouth of that furnace, and where those stones now are you will place this,’ said the spirit. There were four or five fire-bricks placed in the opening of the fire used to heat the room. Kelley removed them, and placed the bag in the furnace.

‘Rise, Pucci, join him, and see to it that he puts them into the very fire,’ said the spirit. ‘You will not withdraw until the fire entirely penetrates them.’ Dee fell to his knees and prayed as he watched the ‘holocaust’ of his precious papers. As they were consumed, Kelley stared into the fiery furnace and saw the shape of a man walking among the flames. He seemed to be plucking the pages out of the fire.

The spirit now commanded Dee to throw in any remaining unbound papers, which he gathered together and handed to Kelley and Pucci. The final instruction was to remove the crystal stone from the table of practice, and suspend the table ‘where there is a chapel of the enemies’ – on the wall of the palace adjoining the chapel of the Jesuit college.¹¹ There it would hang as a ‘token and memorial’ to the spiritual mission that now had apparently been brought to a peremptory end.

Nearly three weeks later, at 1.30pm on 29 April, looking out of a window in the gallery next to his chamber, Kelley saw a man pruning trees in the vineyard, whom Kelley assumed to be the gardener. The man walked over to the house and, without revealing his face, called up to Kelley, telling him to tell his ‘learned master’ Dee to come into the garden. The man then walked over to a rock next to some cherry trees, and there ‘seemed to mount up in a great pillar of fire’.¹²

Kelley told his wife to go down to the garden and see if there was anyone there, but she could find no one. Kelley reported what he had seen to Dee, fearing that he was being disturbed by a wicked spirit. They both went into the garden, walking to the banqueting hall in the grounds, and along a cliffside to a bank next to a pile of vine stakes and an almond tree. Dee and Kelley remained there for a quarter of an hour, looking for a further sign of the spirit’s presence. Then Dee noticed something white, like a sheet of paper, moving in the wind. He went over to find out what it was and found three books beneath the tree. They were three of his books of mysteries, the book of Enoch, the forty-eight Angelic Keys and the Liber Scientæ Terrestris Auxilii et Victoriæ.¹³

The gardener Kelley had seen earlier now reappeared, and led Kelley off into the vines. Dee stayed under the almond tree, awaiting his return. Kelley eventually reappeared carrying the material that had apparently been destroyed in the furnace. It had been found, he told Dee, in the mouth of the furnace.

The following day, Dee and Kelley resumed their actions. A spirit confirmed that these were to continue, but not with Pucci, who was ‘defiled’. ‘For behold, you are yet in the wilderness,’ the spirit warned. ‘Therefore be silent.’

The spiritual warning came too late. On the very day that Dee had recovered his books, Filippo Sega, Malaspina’s successor, wrote to the Pope warning that Dee had managed to infiltrate the imperial court, where he was spreading a ‘new superstition’.

There may also have been growing suspicions in court that Dee was a spy. On 6 May, Dee went to Leipzig, where he expected to meet up with his servant Edmund Hilton, who was evidently acting as a courier between him and the English court. Dee arrived on 11 May, and made contact with an English merchant, Laurence Overton, who, taken ill in Prague the year before had sought refuge in Dee’s house, and been nursed back to health by Jane. Overton said that Hilton had not yet arrived, and was not expected for another sixteen days. Dee decided he could not wait, and left a letter to be given to Hilton when he turned up. It was addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s chief spymaster. ‘I am forced to be brief,’ he wrote. ‘That which England suspected was also here.’ He does not specify what was suspected, but it was connected with his having been for the past two years ‘pried and peered into’ by Imperial spies. Dee also asked Walsingham to send Thomas Digges, Dee’s former pupil and close friend, ‘in her Majesty’s behalf, to perform ‘some piece of good service’. Again, Dee offered no specifics.

The following month, Walsingham received another report from Germany, this time written by the financier and traveller Sir Horatio Palavicino, which said: ‘The bearer will tell you verbally about Doctor Dee and “Kele” [Kelley]’.¹⁴

By 24 May, Dee was back in Prague, where he received a warning that the nuncio had submitted to the Emperor a portfolio of evidence charging Dee with necromancy and ‘other prohibited arts’.¹⁵ The accusations that had dogged him since his days at Cambridge had now reached across Europe, to Prague. On 28 May, Dee wrote to Rudolf, pleading his innocence. His pleas had no effect. The following day, a clerk arrived from the court with a decree signed by Rudolf himself banishing Dee, his family and Kelley from the empire. They had just six days to leave.

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