English Puritanism the Situation in Germany

Essentially gnostic and irenic, the religious Hermetism of post-Medieval times flourished in places where tolerance prevailed—at the same time as favoring the latter. During the sixteenth century it was not welcomed in England either by Puritanism or by Hispano-Catholic policy. 

As is well known, the Lutheranism of the Germanic countries delayed the reception of Humanism. This is why the Corpus Hermeticum, which arose out of Humanist culture, penetrated less into Germany than elsewhere. But in the Germanic countries, other esoteric currents (theosophy of Weigel and Boehme, Paracelsism, Rosicrucianism) compensated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for this absence. Germanic theosophy scarcely ever alludes to Hermes Trismegistus. 

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