Daniel Cramer's Emblems were issued in 1617 during the height of Rosicrucian publishing under the title 'The True Society of Jesus and the Rose Cross'. The 40 emblems, arranged in four 'decades', are expressions of a meditative process centered upon a mystical contemplation of the heart of man. Each emblem has a title, a verse from the Bible, and two lines of explanation added below.
Daniel Cramer (Daniel Candidus) (20 January 1568 – 5 October 1637) was a German Lutheran theologian and writer from Reetz (Recz), Brandenburg. He was an opponent of the Ramists and the Jesuits.
The common denominator of all the Cramer's emblems is a mystic heart, represented in the most different situations: chained, crowned, nailed to a cross, to the roots of a rosary, endowed with wings, undermined by the devil, and so on. The books of emblems composed by Daniel Cramer are considered by some scholars (for example Adam McLean and Giordano Berti) as expressions of the Rosicrucian thought. Indeed, various clues suggest that Cramer was a member of the Rosicrucian brotherhood.
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