ROSY CROSS, BROTHERS OF. A secret society bearing this name became known in Europe at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its object was the reformation of state, church, and individuals, and the study of philosophy and science. At that time alchemy occupied, in a large degree, the attention of the learned, and it is not strange that the Rosicrucians should follow the fashion of the age. It was pretended that the order was founded in the four teenth century by a person named Christian Rosenkreuz, who was said to have lived long among the Brahmins, in Egypt, etc.; but the real founder is believed to have been Andrea, a German scholar, of the latter part of the sixteenth century, whose object was to purify religion, which had been degraded by the scholastic philosophy. Others think that he only gave a new character to a society founded before him, by Agrippa von Neltesheim. Krause says that Andrea occupied himself from early youth with the plan of a secret society for the improvement of mankind. In 1 614 he pub lished his famous "Reformation of the Whole Wide World," and "Faina Fraternitatis." Christian enthusiasts and alche mists considered the society, poetically described in those books, as one really existing; and thus Andrea became the author of the later Rosicrucian fraternities, which extended over Europe and were even brought into connection with Freemasonry. Bailey, in his Dictionary, inclines to the opinion that Rosenkreuz was the real founder of the order. He says: "A German gentleman, educated in a monastery, having learned the languages, traveled to the Holy Land A. D. 1378, and being at Damascus, and falling sick, he had heard the conversation of some Arabs and other Oriental philosophers, by whom he is supposed to have been initiated into this mysterious art. At his return into Germany he formed a society, and communicated to its members the secrets he had brought with him out of the East, and died in 1484. They were a sect or cabal of hermetical philosophers,
who bound themselves together by a solemn secret which they swore inviolably to observe, and obliged themselves,.at their admission into the order, to a strict observance of certain established rules. They pretended to know all sciences, and especially medicine, of which they published themselves the restorers; they also claimed to be masters of important secrets, and, among others, that of the philosopher's stone; all which they affirmed they had received by tradition from the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Magi and Gymnoso phists. They pretended to protract the period of human life, by means of certain nostrums, and even to restore youth. They are also called the Invisible Brothers, because they have made no appearance, but have kept themselves incog. for several years." Notwithstanding the flippant descrip tion of Bailey, and the vile calumniations of Barruel, the Order of the Rosy Cross was eminently respectable, and its purposes praiseworthy. Its ideas, like those of the Illuminati were in advance of the age, and, however objectionable tc such advocates of political and religious despotism, as Rob ison, Barruel, et al., are precisely those principles which we, as a nation, have embodied in our institutions and laws, and of which we are justly proud. The Rosicrucians did fraternize with the Freemasons, and it was a very respect able companionship. The twenty-eighth degree of Free masonry must have been composed by Freemasons who were also members of the Order of the Rosy Cross. The ritual of the Rosicrucians had nine degrees: 1. Zelator; 2. Thericus; 3. Practicus; 4. Philosophus; 5. Adeptus Junior; 6. Adeptus Major ; 7. Adeptus Exemptus ; 8. Magister ; 9. Magus. From this Order originated the " German," " Gold Rose-Croix," and also the " Asiatic Brothers." The Masonic degree of "Sovereign Prince of Rose-Croix" has no connection with the Rosiorucians.