ROSICRUCIANS(Rosenkreuzer), a celebrated but entirely fabulous secret society. In 1614 there appeared at Cassel an anonymous German work, Allgemeine und General-Reformation der ganzen Welt benebeη der Fama Fraternitatis des löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreuzes, inviting the scholars of Europe to test the pretensions and join the ranks of a secret society, said to have been founded two hundred years before by a certain Christian Rosen-kreuz, who had acquired on a pilgrimage the hidden wisdom of the East. The society, according to this account, possessed many secret gifts of knowledge, of which goldmaking was one of the least. Its character was Christian and of Protestant type; its chief aim was the gratuitous healing of the sick. Though the origin of the Fama and some subsequent tracts in supplement to it has never been made quite clear, it has generally been held that Arnold, in his Kirchen-und Ketzer-Historie, renders it highly probable that the author was the talented theologian and polymath Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), and that the book was originally a sort of elaborate joke composed in the stift at Tübingen. But the marvellous elements in the account of Rosenkreuz and his society only served in that age to draw serious attention to the supposed order. A large controversial literature sprang up, and, while some violently condemned the Rosicrucians as heretics in theology and medicine, others, and among them R. Fludd (çt.u), defended them and hoped great things from the enlarged activity which was proposed for them in the Fama and its companion tracts. Gradually it came to be generally seen that the whole thing was a mystification. The name and fable of the Rosicrucians have, however, from time to time been made use of by such impostors as Cagliostro.