John Bargel
John Bargel (fl. 1660s-1680s) or Bargelius was an English writer, Rosicrucian philosopher and controversialist. He translated the Speculum Sophicum Rhodostauroticum ("The Mirror of the Wisdom of the Rosy Cross") into English and wrote numerous pamphlets in both English and Latin speculating on points of natural philosophy. At one point he was Master of Hitchin Grammar School when Thomas Heyndy was dispossessed at the Restoration.
Literary controversies
Bargel wrote many of his pamphlets in a literary scientific debate with an unidentified opponent who used the pseudonym Snargelius. Even at the time there was debate as to the identity of Snargelius; Pepys wrote that he believed Snargelius to be an associate of Bargel, or possibly even Bargel himself, writing to give wider circulation to Bargel's theories.
Dr Johnson compared the conflict between the Stuarts and Hanoverians to "the wranglings of Snargelius and Bargelius" in the Hebrides: Boswell omitted the passage from his The Journal of A Tour to the Hebrides for political reasons.
References
- Susanna Åkerman, "Rose cross over the Baltic: the spread of rosicrucianism in Northern Europe", Brill's studies in intellectual history 87, (Brill, 1998) ISBN 9004110305
- Johannes Kepler (tr. & ed. Edward Rosen), "Kepler's somnium: the dream, or posthumous work on lunar astronomy", (Courier Dover Publications, 2003) ISBN 0486432823
- William R. Newman, Anthony Grafton, "Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe", Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology, (MIT Press, 2001) ISBN 0262140756