Discourses of Tolerance & Intolerance in the European Enlightenment 9781442687882

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Introduction
Prologue: Towards A Reconstruction Of The Discourse On Tolerance And Intolerance In The Age Of Enlightenment
Toleration And Ragion Di Stato: Jews And Protestants In The Savoyard State, Ca. 1650–1750
Locke And The Problem Of Toleration
Political Parties And The Legitimacy Of Opposition
Millenarianism And Tolerance
The Practice Of Religious Tolerance And Intolerance In Late Eighteenth-Century Württemberg
Jewish Emancipation In France In The Eighteenth Century
The Jewish Question In Eighteenth-Century Germany
Discrediting Slavery: From The Société Des Amis Des Noirs To The Haitian Revolution – Ideological Patterns And Anthropological Discourses
The Intolerable Other
Masculinity, Lunacy, And The Sexual Deviant
Extirpation And Toleration: Villain And Whore – Some Thoughts About The Toleration Of ‘Social Evil’ In Bourgeois Society
Index

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D I S C O UR SE S OF T OLER A NCE AND I NT O L E R A NC E I N T HE EURO PEAN ENLI G HT E NMENT

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Discourses of Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Enlightenment

Edited by Hans Erich Bödeker, Clorinda Donato, and Peter Hanns Reill

Published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

© The Regents of the University of California Press 2009 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9178-9

Printed on acid-free paper UCLA Center / Clark Series 8

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Discourses of tolerance and intolerance in the European Enlightenment / edited by Hans Erich Bödeker, Clorinda Donato and Peter Hanns Reill. (UCLA Center/Clark series ; 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9178-9 1. Toleration – Europe – History – 18th century. 2. Enlightenment. 3. Toleration. 4. Discrimination – Europe – History – 18th century. 5. Europe – Social conditions – 18th century. I. Bödeker, Hans Erich. II. Donato, Clorinda. III. Reill, Peter Hanns IV. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. V. University of California, Los Angeles. Center for 17th- & 18thCentury Studies. VI. Series: UCLA Clark Memorial Library series ; 8 B802.D48 2008

323.094c09033

C2008-903522-4

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Contributors ix Introduction 3 peter hanns reill Prologue: Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance in the Age of Enlightenment 17 hans erich bödeker 1 Toleration and Ragion di Stato: Jews and Protestants in the Savoyard State, ca. 1650–1750 27 geoffrey symcox 2 Locke and the Problem of Toleration richard ashcraft

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3 Political Parties and the Legitimacy of Opposition terence ball 4 Millenarianism and Tolerance richard popkin

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5 The Practice of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Late Eighteenth-Century Württemberg 116 hartmut lehmann

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6 Jewish Emancipation in France in the Eighteenth Century frances malino 7 The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century Germany d av i d s o r k i n

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8 Discrediting Slavery: From the Société des Amis des Noirs to the Haitian Revolution – Ideological Patterns and Anthropological Discourses 153 hans-jürgen lüsebrink 9 The Intolerable Other 170 m a d e ly n g u t w i r t h 10 Masculinity, Lunacy, and the Sexual Deviant ann goldberg

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11 Extirpation and Toleration: Villain and Whore – Some Thoughts about the Toleration of ‘Social Evil’ in Bourgeois Society 204 peter becker Index

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Acknowledgments

The essays in this volume were presented as part of a conference sponsored and organized by the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The Volkswagen Foundation very generously underwrote a part of the conference. The editors thank all of those who made the conference possible: Candis Snoddy and Marina Romani of the center and the staff of the library. It has taken much longer to produce this volume than expected, because of a number of unexpected delays. The main delay was caused by the tragic death of our colleague Richard Ashcraft, who was at the height of his intellectual powers. He had left only a portion of his essay, and we had to reconstruct it from notes and excerpts from his other publications. The other delays had to do with staffing issues and the overextended demands placed on the volume’s editors. Still, although it is more than five years since the conference was held, the topic is as relevant now as it was when the conference was first held, if not more so. The events of 11 September 2001 and its aftermath make it clear how fragile the trajectory of toleration is and how necessary it is to understand its history if we desire to institute an expanded practice of toleration in today’s difficult world. The editors hope that this volume will play a part in keeping that reminder alive. Finally, we would like to thank Ms Ellen Judy Wilson, the center/ library editor, who did a marvellous job in helping us and the authors produce the texts we offer here to the reading public.

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Contributors

Richard Ashcraft was, before his untimely death, one of the leading interpreters of John Locke’s political thought. He was professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author and/or editor of such important volumes as Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government ; Locke’s Two Treatises of Government ; John Locke: Critical Assessments ; and Philosophy, Science and Religion in England, 1640–1700. The essay in this volume is the last piece Professor Ashcraft wrote. Terence Ball received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Formerly professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, he now teaches political theory at Arizona State University. He has also held academic appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of California, San Diego. He is author of Transforming Political Discourse (1988), Reappraising Political Theory (1995), and a mystery novel, Rousseau’s Ghost (1998), among other works. He is also editor or coeditor of eleven books, including The Federalist (2003) and The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (2003), and the author of more than eighty scholarly articles and chapters in edited volumes. Peter Becker is professor of modern and contemporary history at Johannes-Kepler-Universität in Linz, Austria, and a fellow of the ZiFResearch Group ‘Control of Violence’ in Bielefeld. He has also been a fellow of both the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, and the Max Planck Institute of History in Göttingen, and, until 2005, professor of history at the European University Institute in Florence. His

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main research interests are in the cultural history of public administration (Le charme discret du formulaire, 2007), the history of biological research on violence in postwar Europe, and the history of criminology as discourse and practice (Verderbnis und Entartung, 2002). Hans Erich Bödeker is a specialist in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Europe with an emphasis on Germany and France. His research interests focus on the cultural history of the German educated classes from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, especially relating to cultural practices. His work also addresses the history of political theories with a focus on the political culture of the French and German Enlightenments. He is the author of numerous articles and has edited or coedited many important books on these topics, which include Aufklärung und Geschichte, Lesekultur im 18: Jahrhundert, Sociétés de musique en Europe, 1700–1920, and Lesekulturen im 18: Jahrhundert. He was senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen; since 2006 he has been a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Clorinda Donato is professor of French and Italian at California State University, Long Beach. The author of nearly fifty articles on the reception of the French Enlightenment in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, she was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government in 2005. She is coauthor, with Robert M. Maniquis, of The ‘Encyclopédie’ in the Age of Revolution (1992) and coeditor of L’Encyclopédie d’Yverdon et sa résonance européenne: Contextes contenus prolongements (2005). Her current writing and research on queer and gender studies includes a forthcoming work entitled ‘Dissecting Gender in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Italy: The Case of Catterina Vizzani.’ Ann Goldberg, associate professor in the history department at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of Sex, Religion and the Making of Modern Madness (1999). Her forthcoming book is entitled ‘Aggrieved: Honor, Politics, and Law in Germany, 1871–1914.’ Madelyn Gutwirth, author of Madame de Staël, Novelist – The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (1978), The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (1991), and numerous studies on

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the late eighteenth century, is emerita professor of French and women’s studies at West Chester University. Hartmut Lehmann is emeritus professor of history at the universities of Göttingen and Kiel. He is also emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute of History in Göttingen. Before serving in this position, Professor Lehmann was the founding director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. He is the author and/or editor of many volumes dealing with topics ranging from the history of Pietism to the history of religion, German-American relations, the theory of history, and Max Weber. Among his many publications are Pietismus und Weltordnung in Württemberg; Das Zeitalter des Absolutismus; Transformationen der Religion in der Neuzeit: Max Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’; Jansenismus, Quietismus, Pietismus; Antike Weisheit und kulturelle Praxis; and Paths of Continuity: Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink is chair of French cultural studies and intercultural communication, University of Saarbrücken, Germany. His research interests include popular literatures and media, transatlantic cultural transfers, and conceptual history, and he is currently working on a critical edition of Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Enlightenment, Revolution and the Periodical Press (ed. with Jeremy Popkin, 2004); Interkulturelle Kommunikation: Interaktion – Kulturtransfer – Fremdwahrnehmung (2005); and Das Europa der Aufklärung und die außereuropäische koloniale Welt (2006). Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History at Wellesley College and chair of the Jewish studies program. She is author of The Sephardic Jews of Bordeaux: Assimilation and Emancipation in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and A Jew in the French Revolution: The Life of Zalkind Hourwitz, and coeditor of Essays in Modern Jewish History: A Tribute to Ben Halpern; The Jews in Modern France; Profiles in Diversity: Jews in a Changing Europe ; and Voices of the Diaspora: Jewish Women Writing in the New Europe. Her current project is ‘Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands.’ Richard H. Popkin was, at the time of his death in April 2005, emeritus professor of philosophy at Washington University (St Louis) and adjunct professor in the departments of history and philosophy at UCLA. He also

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taught at the University of Iowa, Harvey Mudd College, and the University of California, San Diego. He wrote or edited more than thirty volumes on the history of philosophy and the history of ideas, including his classic The History of Skepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (2003); Spinoza (2004); and the Cambridge History of Western Philosophy (1999). Peter Hanns Reill is distinguished professor of history at UCLA and director of both the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and EighteenthCentury Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. His books include The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (1975) and Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (2005). He has edited or coedited the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (1996, 2004); Aufklärung und Geschichte (1986); Visions of Empire (1996); Wissenschaft als kulturelle Praxis (1999); and, with Keith Baker, What’s Left of the Enlightenment (2001). David Sorkin is professor of history and Frances and Laurence Weinstein Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (1987); Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (1996); The Berlin Haskalah and German Religious Thought (2000); and The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews and Catholics from London to Vienna (2008). Geoffrey Symcox is professor emeritus in the history department at UCLA. His field of study is early modern Europe, specializing in the history of the Savoyard state, ca 1500–1800, and in the urban development of its capital city, Turin. He is the author of Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State, 1675–1730 (1983: Italian translation 1985; French translation forthcoming); chapters in vol. 4 of the Storia di Torino (2002); A History of Turin (with Anthony Cardoza, 2006); and numerous articles and book chapters on the social and political history of early modern Piedmont.

D I S C O UR SE S OF T OLER A NCE AND I NT O L E R A NC E I N T HE EURO PEAN ENLI G HT E NMENT

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Introduction PETER HANNS REILL

Tolerance, conceived as a positive general principle essential to the proper functioning of pluralistic democracy and contemporary Western civil society, is a child of the Enlightenment. But it is a child all too often abandoned in the face of competing exclusionary principles such as religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, and normality. Tolerance and intolerance, therefore, act together in a dynamic relationship that has produced results ranging from the highly beneficial to the tragic. If we, today, tend to prefer policies of toleration to those of exclusion, we must in part thank the Enlightenment, for it was only in that era that tolerance of diversity and the practices associated with such a principle acquired positive value. Before the Enlightenment, individual and group adherence to long-established traditions was deemed ‘normal’ in the well-functioning state society; diversity was considered an anomaly, threatening to the survival of authority, whether in the realms of religion, society, or the polity. The practice of toleration was thus negatively charged, endorsed at best out of pragmatic necessity. The major shift effected in the Enlightenment resulted from the tensions between belief and authority that had been played out as European states and peoples experienced the Protestant Reformation, its Catholic counterpart, the establishment of absolute monarchies, and the development of trade and commerce. The movement towards toleration was intensified by the disasters wrought by the horrendous wars of the seventeenth century, which pitted contending groups against each other with a ferocity almost unknown in Europe’s earlier history. The basic imperative of this shift was to treat the Other as worthy of respect and recognition. But the Other, in this case, was always a group of people defined by

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some common trait, in line with the corporatist notions that operated in all aspects of society and polity. Groups that had been excluded or ostracized in early times were sometimes accorded some aspects of a normal existence, protected by the law and deemed worthy of legal, although infrequently of social, acceptance. In other words, the positive concept of toleration forged in the Enlightenment validated the crossing of customary social, political, and religious boundaries not by individuals privileged through wealth or connections, as had often occurred, but by whole groups. To cite but one example: toleration was claimed for those who were Jewish, whether or not they were fortunate enough to be ‘court Jews,’ the latter a recognized and tolerated category in the hierarchically organized social world of early modern Europe. Traditional scholarship on the formation of the discourse of toleration has done much to expand our knowledge of specific moments in its history, but it has also been too restrictive in the kinds of questions posed. Often it has viewed the development of the discourse of tolerance as a part of the history of the progress of civilization, assuming the concept to be self-evident and its implementation unquestionably desirable. In this explanatory strategy, the discourse of tolerance is not only judged positively; it is affirmed as the ideal around which all modern pluralistic societies should be organized. Its opposite, the discourse of intolerance, is considered to be a reactionary rejection of modernity. What this explanatory pattern has not answered is why the discourse and practice of intolerance has remained such a powerful force in the modern world, one that still strikes a vibrant response, as evidenced today in the United States and by events throughout the world. This dilemma has impelled some contemporary scholars to re-examine the origins and significance of the idea and practice of tolerance and its dialectical antipode, intolerance. This investigation usually is carried out within the larger project of reinterpreting the Enlightenment in terms radically different from those traditionally employed. To the extent that the modern discourse of tolerance was created during the Enlightenment and formed one of its core beliefs, it is open to the general critique levelled at the Enlightenment by writers from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the 1930s to Michel Foucault and Alasdair MacIntyre in the present. According to these critics, the Enlightenment, rather than advancing the causes of individual freedom, religious liberty, and the recognition of individual and group uniqueness, expanded the realm of state control and authority, establishing the omnipresent gaze of a centralized domination that regulates, controls, and disciplines trans-

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gressors. For them, the Enlightenment was authoritarian, even protototalitarian. They argue that beliefs central to the Enlightenment, including tolerance, must be evaluated more as vehicles of repression and control than as agents promoting individual and group freedom. In the case of tolerance, the issue is complicated by the fact that tolerance, in theory, requires an extension or redefinition of individual spheres of activity with a concomitant minimization of the power of the state to regulate individual lives. But, to be put into practice, tolerance also requires the forging of new definitions of normative behaviour, often in the face of entrenched traditions and assumptions. As a rule these new norms are legislated by the state, which systematically intrudes itself into the daily lives of its subjects. To legislate and establish behavioural norms is to control. Two basic questions arise from this critique. Is tolerance, legislated and administered by the state, more dangerous to individual freedom than competing ideologies of exclusion based on norms such as ethnicity, religion, and nationality? And does the mechanism of decreeing toleration for specific groups automatically generate its opposite, a discourse of intolerance in which these groups are separated from the whole, either by others or by their own emerging claims to uniqueness? In short, how ‘different’ can one be and still be protected by the culture of toleration? This negative interpretation of the Enlightenment and one of its most central discourses has been reinforced by a critique from another quarter, namely, gender studies. Here the issue is the effect such new discourses had on gender relations, and especially on women. Once again the focus of the debate has been the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, which, for many, is seen as a failed attempt to put Enlightenment ideas into practice. Increasingly, studies in the history of women have come to the conclusion that the late Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution established practices and concepts that restricted and minimalized women’s role in society, forcing women to limit their activities to the hermetic world of the small nuclear household. If participating equally in civic activities and acquiring the full rights of a citizen were the intended goals of toleration, then by the end of the eighteenth century women were excluded instead of included in the process. Rather than being liberated by Enlightenment and Revolutionary practices, women were marginalized, virtually excluded from the accepted civic arena. Both of these contemporary critiques of the Enlightenment proclaim a discrepancy between theory and practice, asserting that the expressions of Enlightenment thinkers were contradicted by their practice. They argue that the discourse of tolerance said one thing and did something

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else. It was an ‘ideology’ in the Marxian sense, an intellectual construct serving as a smoke-screen to mask the playing out of new systems of domination. Given these new evaluations of the Enlightenment and its core concepts, it is essential to investigate again the genesis of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance and to discuss the relationship between Enlightenment theories of tolerance and practices of toleration. This requires the creation of a new interpretive sphere of study, to include topics often excluded from more traditional analyses. The goals of this volume are threefold: to reinforce the idea of the reciprocal relationship between the discourses of tolerance and intolerance; to trace their genesis and interaction; and, in the process, to seek to better understand the dynamics of Enlightenment theory and practice. The critical issues addressed in this volume concentrate on the Enlightenment but focus on the broadly defined questions of how the Other is defined and treated. Why were some groups able to achieve positive toleration (acceptance as the ‘normal other’) and other groups not? It will probe issues that deal with establishing boundaries between groups and the mechanisms that allowed these boundaries to be crossed. It will pose the question of the relationship between boundary rules and their expansion or contraction. Does the expansion on one side result in any sort of diminution on the other? Is one group’s acceptance purchased at the expense of another’s? If so, how and why? It will try to investigate a double and interlocking dialectic, the first between tolerance and intolerance, the second between marginalization and deviation. In this sense, the tension between acceptance (tolerance) and rejection (intolerance) is modified by attitudes towards deviants and the marginalized. In the case of ‘deviants,’ groups specifically defined by social position, status, sexual activity, and mental or physical ability or disability, the decision to grant toleration or to enforce exclusionary measures is a conscious policy. Marginalized groups, to use our term, are another matter, groups ‘unseen’ in a society and thus virtually excluded from conscious consideration, yet accepted, officially and informally as part of the existing social order. What dynamic can one discern in the Enlightenment that leads to the realignment of relations among tolerance, intolerance, deviance, and marginalization? And what does this dynamic reveal about the ambivalences within the discourse of tolerance itself? The volume also raises the issue of gender, not solely as a separate category but as a thread that runs through the whole discussion; for, though the relationship between women and men cannot be placed directly

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within the discourses of tolerance and intolerance, it played a crucial, if hidden role in shaping the languages of sociability and unsociability, of liberty and rights, and in influencing their implementation. In all of these considerations a serious attempt is made to probe the tensions between theory and practice, pronouncement and implementation, for it is precisely this area that has served as the entry point for contemporary critiques of the Enlightenment. Finally, there is the question of the degree to which the discourses of tolerance and intolerance are locked within a relationship of reciprocity: do both use the same language, only reversed – or is one a reaction to the other? In other words, can one create a language of tolerance without automatically creating its Doppelgänger, its mirror image? It is, of course, a question that cannot be directly answered but informs the majority of essays in this volume. The volume is introduced by a prologue written by Hans-Eric Bödeker that both rehearses the problem of writing a history of tolerance and intolerance and proposes a number of problem complexes that a future treatment of the subject should address. Bödeker sketches out the trajectory of the terms tolerance and intolerance and the contexts in which they were generated, pointing to the primacy of religious and political issues in their formation and the extension of the terms to cover broader social questions. The remaining essays, organized around two central themes, trace the expansion of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance. The first group treats tolerance and intolerance in relation to the spheres of religious and political thought and practice. Here the tensions in the Enlightenment revolved around contending claims of state power and individual conscience. These claims became more complicated as the discourses of tolerance and intolerance were infused with the language of liberty and rights, and led eventually to the question of whether acceptance as a ‘normal’ citizen is the prerequisite of achieving tolerance. The second group expands on these basic issues by examining the extension of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance into the social sphere. It addresses the broad issues of tolerance and intolerance applied to the realms of race, gender, deviancy, and criminality. In so doing, it turns to the increasing emphasis placed upon character, identity, nation, and class in the formation of these two discourses, a development that maps these discourses on to the moral sphere as well as the civic. Here, the central issues address the question of the grounds that allowed tolerance to occur and seek to determine the limits of toleration within eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century societies.

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Geoffrey Symcox’s opening essay on religious toleration and ‘reason of state’ offers a compelling picture of the traditional functioning of the concept of toleration before it was recast as a general principle by the Enlightenment. Savoy, of all of the states of Europe at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, was probably the best example of an absolute state shaped by the will of a highly gifted ruler whose guiding principles were based on reason of state. Victor Amadeus, as did his French contemporary, Louis XIV, desired to forge a unified, centralized state in which uniqueness was to be limited and policed, if not destroyed. The Waldensians and Jews represented two groups whose independent existence was considered to be both a threat to sovereign authority and an affront to true religion. However, because of Savoy’s size and position in Europe, Victor Amadeus chose to forge his policies with an eye on the powerful countries that he had to appease. Symcox retells the story of the Waldensians’ travail, as they first were persecuted, massacred, and expelled from Savoy to win favour with Louis XIV, and later granted limited toleration and the right to return to please the Maritime Powers, England and the United Netherlands. When the Waldensians returned they were sealed off in a veritable ghetto, tolerated but not accepted. In short, the Waldensians won whatever toleration they had because of outside pressures. The story of the Jews was different because there were no nations willing to intercede for them. Hence, their history in Savoy is one of a clear reversal of fortune. Although they were first allowed a relative degree of freedom, the centralizing policies of Victor Amadeus, based on a broadly conceived strategy of administrative reform and urban restructuring, led to the ghettoization of the Jews, first in Turin and then, in 1727, in all of Savoy. Symcox demonstrates that the forces of centralization and the dictates of ragion di stato (reason of state) were not, as some believe, automatic agents in the expansion of the concept and practice of toleration. Both the Jews and the Waldensians were never accorded toleration in the Enlightenment sense of the word. Although officially tolerated, both groups were excluded, through aspects of ghettoization, from normal positions in society and were governed by the intruding gaze of the state. One of the most important shapers of the Enlightenment understanding of toleration was John Locke. Richard Ashcraft attempts to reassess the manner in which the idea of toleration functions in the context of Locke’s political thought. In so doing, Ashcraft seeks to mediate between two contradictory interpretations of Locke’s concept of toleration. The first is what Ashcraft calls an over-historicization of Locke’s thought, a

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position that assumes that given the strong religious underpinnings of Locke’s position, his argument no longer has relevance to individuals living in our contemporary secular society. The second interpretation is what one may call a misplaced concentration upon the analytical content of Locke’s theory, asserting that Locke’s position was laced with bad philosophical arguments. In Ashcraft’s view, Locke’s idea of tolerance marked off the modern ‘ground of battle and provided some of the weapons for carrying the fight forward.’ His theory was, ‘not a defense of rights,’ but rather a challenge to authority.’ In this sense, Locke’s idea of authority directly counters the one embraced by the reforming centralized monarch in Symcox’s account of Savoy, thus revealing the tensions among obedience, conformity, and uniqueness that lie at the heart of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance. Terence Ball discusses some of the same people discussed by Ashcroft – Locke, Toland, and the Levellers – but he focuses upon a different question, namely the major eighteenth-century transformation that led to the modern idea of political party and to the legitimization of opposition. Arguing that the institution of the modern political party was a momentous moral and intellectual achievement, necessary for the emergence of the modern concept of toleration, Ball traces the way in which this linguistic and conceptual shift occurred, beginning in the writings of Locke and contract theorists and extended by thinkers as diverse as Bolingbroke, Hume and Burke, reaching its clearest exposition in Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Ball’s major theme is the change from a negatively charged conceptual world in which factions were damned as ‘evil weeds’ to one where ‘principled’ parties were seen as desirable and necessary. Central to this process was a shift from considering the state as an organic entity to reconceptualizing it as the artificial creation of contracting ‘parties,’ a transformation that entailed a major rethinking of the basic terms of state, party, and citizen. Madison and Jefferson clearly explicate this conceptual shift, in which ‘the toleration of opposing viewpoints was ... regarded as respectable and legitimate.’ It is usually assumed that the growth of toleration was coupled with the expansion of a secular world-view or at least with the diminishment of religious enthusiasm. Richard Popkin’s analysis of the relationship between millenarianism and tolerance questions this basic assumption. Unlike some authors who have linked millenarianism with genocide, intolerance, and racism, Popkin argues that in the early modern period and especially in the eighteenth century there existed a ‘benign egalitarian millenarianism which promoted tolerance.’ The representatives of

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this movement – Ezra Stiles, Immanuel Lacunza, and especially Abbé Henri Grégoire – all sought to purify the mundane world, removing the blemishes on its moral record, in order to prepare for the coming of the millennium. Popkin concludes that ‘their (millenarian) advocacy and action to create such a world probably did at least as much to create modern tolerant societies as the deist and non-religious groups in Europe and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.’ These millenarians joined radical religiosity to radical politics, a mix that could not only produce zealous reformers such as Grégoire but also motivate, as Popkin reminds us, the insurgents of Chiapas today. The tension between state authority, the established church, and sectarian, millenarian belief forms the interpretive matrix for Hartmut Lehmann’s analysis of Württemberg’s Protestants. By looking at the dynamic between Enlightenment despotism and tolerance, he rehearses the dilemma Symcox posed but adds the question of how ‘enlightened’ church authorities treated nonconformists. At first glance, Lehmann’s analysis stands in stark contrast to Symcox’s. Here the reforming monarch, Karl Eugen, a Catholic ruling Protestant Württemberg, insisted more on religious tolerance than either the ‘enlightened’ leaders of the established church or his Protestant successor, Frederick II. However, this modicum of toleration came at a price. With each expansion of religious tolerance there came a tightening of political control. Württemberg’s first toleration edict of 1743 ‘allowed a certain degree of religious pluralism – as long as one was and remained obedient in the political realm and industrious in all other matters.’ Religious freedom was further expanded in 1803, but was accompanied by a much more rigid political supervision, resulting in a period of suppression that led to widespread emigration and alienation. Lehmann strikes one of the major themes that runs through all of the chapters, namely, that toleration in one sphere of life is often purchased by restrictions in others. Tolerance and intolerance seem to accompany each other in a complicated pattern. Furthermore, as most of the essays in this volume reveal, the progress of the Enlightenment cannot be equated with the steady progress of general toleration. As originally formulated the discussions concerning tolerance focused on acceptance of competing Christian traditions and different political views expressed within well-defined boundaries. This blending of the religious with the political enabled the linkage of questions of tolerance with those of rights and of national identity, all leading to new ways of perceiving and defining the Other. The late eighteenth-century debates about

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granting toleration to Jews reveal the tensions within this new mix. Frances Malino and David Sorkin provide rich analyses of this complex and controversial issue. According to Sorkin, who charts the process of Jewish toleration in Germany, ‘Jews were the ultimate testing ground for Enlightenment ideals.’ Important not only for its contributions to the conceptualization of tolerance within the Enlightenment, the question of Jewish toleration and emancipation in the Enlightenment and the Revolutionary periods even today provides one of the basic issues in debates on the nature of Jewish identity and on the subsequent history of European Jewry. What both authors make clear is that the story of toleration and Jews, as all others dealing with tolerance and intolerance, was much more complex than usually conceived. As Malino points out, although Jews in France did not acquire religious tolerance until the Revolution, they had enjoyed more rights than Protestants and were very unhappy when the reforming state abolished the corporative autonomy of Jewish communities. In Germany, as Sorkin remarks, by the mid-eighteenth century ‘toleration seems to have become something of an accepted fact, even if opponents were not lacking.’ Thus, before the actual debate concerning Jewish toleration and/or emancipation occurred, tolerance towards Jews seemed to have won a strong foothold in daily practice, although not everywhere in Europe, as Symcox’s discussion of Savoy makes clear. The issue, however, was further complicated when the question of tolerance became intertwined with discussions of civil rights. When the question was asked whether Jews could or should become French or German citizens, the problem of so-called Jewish exclusiveness entered the debate. This conjuncture linked the discourse of tolerance to discussions of national identity and civic responsibility. Sorkin and Malino show that when the issue of rights was joined to that of toleration, ‘it was understood conditionally as being contingent on some form of improvement or regeneration.’ As Malino notes, the central question became: Would Jews ever become useful citizens? And often the proffered answer was: Only if they change their ways. Probably the most famous argument in this vein was provided by the Abbé Grégoire. He linked Jewish emancipation with Jewish regeneration: the former was to be contingent on the latter. In this sense, Jews were seen as the Other in two ways. They were burdened by a set of ‘barbarian’ customs and habits and were considered ‘foreigners’ in the land in which they lived. The only escape offered them was ‘improvement.’ But what did this mean? Sorkin poses a question that scholars are still debating: Was ‘improvement’ the secular equivalent of

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‘conversion’? Is tolerance possible only when certain behavioural patterns of the larger community are accepted? The issue of Jewish emancipation serves as an indicator of how the original meaning of the term tolerance was expanded, complicated, and generalized. The second section of this volume discuses this semantic expansion, dealing with race, gender, deviancy, and criminality. Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink presents a case study showing how questions of race, especially of the African ‘race,’ emerged as a central issue in the discourses of tolerance and intolerance in Germany and France during the Enlightenment. Lüsebrink shows that the issue of slavery became intimately combined in France with a new language of rights and freedoms that associated slavery with despotism, tyranny, and barbarism. The same was true in Germany. In both countries, a new anthropology developed, which sought to explain slave violence and revolts by the oppressive nature of the slave system, rather than by inborn traits of the African slaves. Once again, the Abbé Grégoire was a leading figure. He became a devoted defender of the equality of the Blacks and of the necessity for their toleration. But he also introduced the same ambivalent equation in his theories about Blacks as he employed for the Jews. Abolition of slavery was to be accompanied by education and acculturation in preparation for toleration. In a sense, the Other could only be tolerated if the otherness of behavioural patterns was extinguished. If the question of race emerged as a natural extension for issues of tolerance or intolerance, that of gender did not. In one sense women, who constituted half of Europe’s population of course, belonged to all groups, those tolerated and those not tolerated. This makes it different to situate women on what Madelyn Gutwirth calls the ‘map of toleration.’ As she points out, the Enlightenment’s attention to toleration focused on issues of freedom of religion, conscience, and politics, although over time it was influenced by sceptics concerned about the ‘naturalness’ of national and ethnic differences. In the strictest sense, then, women were tolerated: ‘They were,’ Gutwirth affirms, ‘the largest tolerated class of them all.’ But here toleration did not imply equality. As mentioned earlier, one of the major eighteenth-century developments in the modern discourse of toleration was to increasingly merge the language of toleration with the languages of rights and equality. When and to what extent that merger occurred, initiated a major shift in the way one conceived male/female relationships. Gutwirth addresses this issue by demonstrating that most eighteenth-century solutions were fraught with ambiguity and raw contradictions, ever teetering, as she says, ‘between female inad-

Introduction

13

equacy and superiority.’ Gutwirth employs literature as the medium to unpack these contradictions. She looks at portrayals of women that sought, by distancing women from contemporary society, displacing them, to discover women’s essential nature. Gutwirth concentrates on the eighteenth-century fixation with the fantasized ‘exotic’ woman exploring the manner in which eighteenth-century Europeans used the exotic as a medium to project differing images of woman. She focuses on three works, Voltaire’s Zaïre (1732), Marivaux’s La Colonie 25 (1729), and De Staël’s Mirza (1786), showing that each author illustrated notions of woman as a sexual object juxtaposed with those that defined woman as a free and equal individual. In the first two works, woman’s role remained, with various exceptions, that of a person driven more by passion than by judgment. In the tension between Eros and reason, woman is ruled by Eros and therefore incapable of achieving true equality or citizenship. Still in both, moments appear when ‘women’s complaints become concrete and pathos momentarily occurs,’ attesting to the forces let loose yet not wholly resolved by the merging of the languages of tolerance, rights, and equality. In Staël’s Mirza, the positions are reversed; Mirza, the woman, assumes the role of the male where ‘devotion to love and freedom are indissociable,’ while the male (Ximéo) becomes an exotic sexual figure, ‘a vision of accommodating male desire.’ Yet, even in this tale written by a woman who aspired to equality and love, Mirza has to sacrifice love to achieve equality. ‘Woman’s aspiration can be made visible only if it is seen as incompatible with sexual love.’ Gutwirth ends her analysis by looking at the effects that the French Revolution has had on the problem of tolerance for women. Unlike many contemporaries she emphasizes the positive effect of the new revolutionary discourse. Although acknowledging that the Revolution did little to improve the status of women, it did ‘alter the rhetoric of liberation, hence the reach of toleration.’ She points to the case of Fanny Raoul’s Opinion d’une femme sur les femmes (1801) to make her point. Raoul seized on the language of rights and equality to speak in a way that would have been inconceivable before the Revolution. Although a minority voice, hers attests to the Enlightenment’s legacy in expanding toleration for women. Gutwirth has detected a tension ‘between the emancipatory discourse of natural rights and the prescriptive discourse of femininity.’ For most eighteenth-century thinkers (Buffon serves as the great exception), woman’s nature, allegedly ruled by insatiable sexual desire, was distinguished from the male’s supposed strong, self-sufficient essence: hence the necessity to control women and limit the degree to which they

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received the full benefits of toleration. ‘Women’s desires’ in each of the cases were to be ‘sublimated to a greater good,’ namely the needs of society imagined and fashioned by men. If women did not achieve full toleration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, other groups, mostly men, were totally excluded from the ‘map of toleration,’ transformed into an Other that had to be locked away or even ‘eradicated.’ Ann Goldberg and Peter Becker deal with two such groups; Goldberg with the ‘male-masturbator’ and Becker with a German criminal type, the Gauner. In both analyses, the dynamics of the discourse of intolerance emerge with a startling clarity, the isolation of a group deemed dangerous, the development of a semiotics to identify group members in the absence of direct observation, and the construction of a descriptive vocabulary that places women in an almost subhuman category. Goldberg concentrates on the construction of a type of ‘mental illness’ called ‘masturbatory insanity,’ which quickly emerged as one of the most common explanations for male insanity. She compares this with explanations for female insanity and discovers that females were never listed as afflicted with this syndrome, although females certainly were not immune to its practice. This dichotomy points to a shift in the manner by which psychiatrists in the early nineteenth century defined male and female nature. In women, masturbation caused states of overexcitement; in men, it was argued, masturbation led to laziness, passivity, and ‘weakness of mind and body.’ In this sense, masturbation addressed the core traits that were coming to define masculinity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, offering an explanation for the emergence of a new type, the ‘effeminate male,’ a character beyond the pale of toleration. Once the type was created, psychiatrists evolved a semiotics to discover male masturbators. A type of circular reasoning supported this endeavour. If masturbation caused males to be lazy, weak, passive, undisciplined, or disobedient, then these same categories, observed in actual patients, acted as signs of masturbatory activity. In short, early nineteenth-century medical experts ‘turned an act into an illness and then into a pathological type,’ which allowed them to separate its members from society and incarcerate them in insane asylums. Becker turns to another group, the so-called Gauners, a loose group of criminals whose major goal was to cheat or steal. For a number of reasons they stood on one of the boundaries of toleration in early nineteenthcentury German society. To highlight this point, Becker compares the treatment of Gauners with that of prostitutes, and thus demonstrates the

Introduction

15

manner in which rationales for toleration or exclusion were constructed. Although not a very large or even dangerous group, Gaunerdom was greatly feared, Becker argues, because they ‘were perceived to undermine the institutions of private property, respect for law and moral probity.’ In short they served as the negative mirror-image of the new bourgeois society then being formed. In Becker’s view, the Gauners occupied a position analogous to that of heretics in the early modern period, who seemed to threaten the existing religious order. This analogy is heightened by the so-called characteristics of Gaunerdom that caused Gauners to be singled out and marked for social exclusion or even extinction. These characteristics, Becker notes, are also common to most modern discourses of intolerance. Supposedly the Gauners formed a distinct social group with its own rules, languages, and associations. They possessed a talent for losing themselves in society, for making themselves ‘invisible’ to the trained eye of the criminologist. They had a ‘missionary zeal,’ were eager to lead unsuspecting youths astray, and in the process set up a ‘state within a state.’ All of these so-called characteristics led early nineteenth-century thinkers to place Gauners within a ‘negative sphere of a world divided between good and evil.’ They became the embodiments of the empire of evil. Prostitutes, the female counterpart of Gauners, were never subjected to such moral vituperation. Although never tolerated in the positive sense of the word, they were thought to be an inescapable product of the male’s insatiable sexual drive (demonstrating a reversal of judgment from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century concerning male and female sexuality), and hence should be controlled and supervised but not abolished. Prostitutes were tolerated because they met some of the state’s utilitarian needs, that is, they provided a safe vent for the release of male passion, especially for the lower classes. Becker concludes by delineating one more element central to the creation of the modern discourse of intolerance: its tendency to apply a descriptive language that makes people who are excluded from the map of toleration into ‘parasites,’ ‘germs,’ and diseases (cancer being the most favoured), thus justifying policies calling for their removal. As these essays reveal, the story of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance is a complicated one that raises issues still central to contemporary society. It is certainly clear that the fight to institute the discourse of tolerance has been a difficult one and is ever threatened by its counterdiscourse, which seems equally strong and compelling. Where and how or should one draw limits to toleration? Does tolerance necessitate uniformity of behaviour, language, or custom, as well as allegiance to a set of

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founding principles? How can tolerance be applied to those who reject its very principles, or, as the recent murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh posed the question: How can we learn to tolerate the intolerant? These are questions that plague us with increased urgency in a world seemingly gone awry. The history of the discourses of tolerance and intolerance may not answer these questions but certainly it can make us aware of the challenges that face us in seeking to create a tolerant world.

Prologue: Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance in the Age of Enlightenment HANS ERICH BÖDEKER

Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to appreciation. To tolerate is to offend. J.W. von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

In modern understanding, tolerance is generally understood as the capability of individuals, groups, and institutions to respect contrary, novel, or strange views, attitudes, values, and modes of behaviour. No longer restricted to the mere endurance or acceptance of the Other (des Anderen), tolerance now means actively appreciating and guaranteeing distinctness. Therefore, tolerance also entails acknowledging a free realm of action for the Other. The question of tolerance touches on essential problems of human association, especially those of persecution, repression, intimidation, and the abuse of power; and therefore, the problem of tolerance always coexists with its intrinsic opposite, intolerance. As a linked pair of phenomena, both tolerance and intolerance are, in the final analysis, products of efforts to define normative behaviours in societies where different orientations and systems of values are engaged in struggles to define themselves with respect to that which is other. The modern concept of tolerance is, on its most fundamental levels, a product of the Age of Enlightenment. Although the problem of how to deal with the Other was by no means new – Jews, Christians, heretics, and Muslims in antiquity and the Middle Ages, after all, had found ways to coexist – it was inherited by the Enlightenment as a set of critical issues specifically rooted in the tumultuous history of the early modern era. In working through the implications of these issues for eighteenth-century life, enlightened figures elevated what had been a secondary virtue in

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early modern Europe, simple toleration or sufferance, into a constitutive moral value – a tolerance that includes acknowledgment and approval of differences. Grasping the nature and significance of the shifts that occurred during the Enlightenment requires keeping the early modern historical roots of the problem of tolerance in sight. Indeed, the specific word ‘toleration’ and its associated concepts first emerged in early modern Europe. At that time, tensions between individual conscience and authority moved to centre-stage, forcing a rethinking and restructuring of normative sociopolitical and sociocultural constellations. The relationship between church and state, the reason of state (Staatsraison), the relationship of subject to sovereign, the development of the concept of the self (Personbegriffe), the structure of the economy and commerce, all began to change in ways that must be understood in order fully to comprehend the meaning of the new concept of toleration. The catalyst for these changes was provided by the Reformation, during which the humanistic Christian rationalism that had dominated medieval Europe disintegrated. In place of the old Christian consensus, a new world appeared, defined by three dominant Christian confessions. Each of these confessions – Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism – claimed exclusive possession of universal truth and was associated with a geographical centre of power (Rome, Wittenberg, and Geneva respectively). As a matter of principle, the competing claims of these groups were irresolvable, not least because of the entanglement between the respective spheres of church and state that characterized early modern European polity. The unusually abrupt shift during the Reformation from the normative world of humanistic Christian rationalism to a new one defined by conflicting confessional standards demanded a reconsideration and reconfiguration of the problem of tolerance. The sacred and the secular, the profane and the religious remained intimately intertwined in postReformation Europe. Religion shaped interpretations of the world, defining not only the understanding of the human condition but also desirable forms of sociopolitical organization, mores and norms, and the limits of acceptable conduct. Indeed, as a major constitutive element of society, religion touched on every aspect of daily human existence. With their mutually exclusive claims to truth, the theologico-ideological systems espoused by the Christian confessions produced distinctive structures of thought, specific mental patterns, and institutional forms, all of which helped to make confessional allegiance the central force in

Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance 19

determining not only individual identities but also relationships between individuals and their communities as well as relations between the various sovereign states. It might be exaggerated to call this situation a ‘sacralization’ of life, but the social and political spheres were, at the very least, religiously charged. This fact rendered confessional interpretations of political conflicts and political interpretations of confessional conflicts unavoidable. It also helped to determine both the elaborative and interpretative outlines of contemporary political and socioeconomic structural questions, from the overseas expansion of Europe to the nature of the early modern state. In the decades following the Reformation, this religious charging of societal life initially transformed the normative issue of confessional exclusivity into a question of life and death. Not toleration of diverse beliefs, and thus of different worlds of norms, but confessional coercion dominated; the existence of diverse confessions within a state, it was maintained, endangered not only the unity of the church but likewise, threatened communal life, political security, and domestic peace. Faced with dissident confessional groups, the responses of authorities ranged widely from attempts to enforce conformity by means of persuasion, forced conversion, exile, and even execution, through mere begrudging sufferance, to formal compromises ensconced in peace treaties signed by the conflicting confessional organizations. Occasionally, tolerance was granted on pragmatic grounds, either as a simple gesture of magnanimity or as an act rooted in philosophical and theological convictions. The history of tolerance in early modern Europe, therefore, is the sum of complex processes of differing durations occurring in diverse realms, all of which were inextricably interwoven. Whatever the solution chosen in specific states, the constitutional order in early modern Europe preserved tolerance as a privilege of sovereignty, derived from the summa potestas of the sovereign. In this world, the ‘normal’ individual subscribed to the specific confession officially recognized by the sovereign, while ‘deviant’ individuals wavered or even refused to subscribe on account of personal conviction. Even though the various European states differed in their confessional allegiances, the concept of tolerance never encompassed the ideas of equal ranking or equivalence between different systems of values. Throughout the eighteenth century, the practice of tolerance remained, except in isolated cases, associated with a hierarchically ordered view that granted neither equal rights to nor parity between systems of values. Nevertheless, during that century, the Enlightenment laid the

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foundations for a new chapter in the definition of the concept and its application in practice. Structural changes occurred in the arguments advanced to favour tolerance as new philosophical grounds and other justifications were developed. Tolerance became a positive act of acknowledgment, as has been noted previously. Conjointly, at least in theory, its links with the realm of the sovereign’s power were severed; no longer was it conceived as a gift granted by the state to dissidents. The daunting abundance of research devoted to the complex history of the theory and practice of tolerance (and intolerance) in the early modern European and Atlantic world has produced important results along two major lines of investigation. On the one hand, attempts have been made to link the process of extending tolerance and the periodic erection of obstacles to that process with socioeconomic and political changes. This research perspective connects the defence and realization of tolerance with political, social, and cultural situations in specific countries and periods. It frequently has produced minute reconstructions of the causes behind and justifications for early modern tolerance legislation. On the other hand, a research perspective centred on the history of ideas has been popular. These investigations have largely concentrated on either the era of the Reformation and the associated wars of religion or on the Age of Enlightenment. This approach has created a rich portrait gallery of thinkers ranging from the important to the negligible. Both approaches – and they cannot always be strictly differentiated – have produced fruitful results, but neither is wholly convincing on either empirical or theoretical grounds. Centred as it has been on laws and legislative processes, the first approach has only rarely examined the application of tolerance laws in practice. Even more rarely has it extended its scope to include examinations of the ordinary daily lives of members of the various religious confessions. The second approach has tended to reduce the history of tolerance to simple description. Theoretical conceptualization has suffered, creating a need for systematic delineation of problems in areas such as the formation and diffusion of the key elements of the idea of tolerance. Both approaches also suffer because they have restricted themselves thematically to the problem of religious tolerance, to the history of sufferance and toleration, and to the processes by which diverse confessions were acknowledged. Too often, they have concentrated on interconfessional conflict, thereby limiting their inquiry to the narrow field of church politics and failing to explore the conceptualization and practice of tolerance and intolerance in other facets of European life.

Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance 21

This contraction of perspective in the historical study of tolerance is founded in part on the restrictive, even anachronistic understanding of religion in the early modern European and Atlantic world that has often informed earlier research on tolerance. By failing to take into account the complex role played by religious affiliation in early modern Europe, these earlier studies have left us with an impoverished understanding of the range of issues within which questions about tolerating the Other influenced individual, institutional, and state actions. Existing research on the history of tolerance also lacks systematic approaches to the problem. Structures of thought, patterns of argumentation, and the conceptual categories that underlie early modern discussions of the issue have all been neglected. It now seems urgent that historians produce an analysis of the categorical mental preconditions that allowed arguments favouring tolerance to multiply in the eighteenth century. Since the critical turning point apparently occurred as religious and theological demonstrations of the truth were being replaced by arguments rooted in secularized conceptions of the world, modern historians of tolerance should find the details of Christian dogma less interesting than the problems embedded within the premises of the various arguments used to support specific positions. Although lacking in logical grounds, the early modern normative categories so important for determining the limits of tolerance functioned to preserve societal stability in the face of various challenges. Inherent to the concept of tolerance in this period was a thought structure that differentiated and excluded both individuals and groups according to prevailing categories of normality. Existing systems of norms were reinforced by the tendency to define the normal by reference to its opposite, the abnormal; people learned what behaviours and beliefs were acceptable and tolerable when examples of the unacceptable were pointed out. People identified as strange, threatening, or inferior helped to clarify and reinforce societal norms by their very differentness. The numerous groups defined as deviant during the early modern era included pagans, fanatics, primitives, the uneducated, and the mentally ill. Disfigured individuals were so defined, along with criminals, renegades, tramps, prostitutes, and beggars; all of them were members of groups situated on the edge of society, all of them were identified as ‘strangers’ or the Other in a world that denied legitimacy to those who were different. If the practice of social patience seldom was given positive value in religiously grounded early modern normative systems, still, it cannot be stated without further investigation that the custom of excluding certain

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groups always amounted to true discrimination. The habit of excluding the Other was so engrained in early modern patterns of thought that even within the general world of deviants, various subgroups differentiated themselves in a manner that prevented them from acknowledging their mutual plight with respect to dominant social norms. Furthermore, strategies of manners developed by which one group could define another in negative terms. In fact, the exclusions and differentiations implied in early modern patterns of sufferance were manifestations not only of discrimination but also of increasing clashes of interest between various social groups, strata, and classes in a world in transition. The language and practices of toleration, therefore, reveal something about the tensions within Europe during early modern times and help us to understand how the boundaries that defined society were drawn by contemporaries of that era. Early modern tolerance was inextricably bound up with questions even more fundamental than those of social structure: the question of the fundamental definition of what it means to be human. Early modern discussions of tolerance drew on not only philosophical and theological ideas about human freedom, a fact long recognized, but they also used the anthropological discourse of the era. Of particular interest was the problem of identifying the specific qualities (measured, of course, against then-predominant norms) that differentiate human beings from the rest of creation. Scholars attempted to describe the range of cultural and physical variations (including ‘race’) among human beings and to order those variations into some rational system. In this manner, anthropological discourse provided another set of criteria for defining the meaning of ‘being different.’ Modern research on early modern tolerance is, therefore, faced with a complex, fluctuating situation in which religious affiliation was only one of many intertwined categories that could be used to make judgments about the social and political acceptability of individuals or groups. All historical studies agree that the eighteenth century represents a crucial phase in the conceptualization of tolerance. Not only did the concept of tolerance stand as a central element in the vocabulary of the Enlightenment, but the practice of toleration, as an act of positive acceptance, was also extended within several European states. Paul Ricoeur has suggested the term ‘consensus conflictuel’ as an apt description of the eighteenth-century solution to the problem of the Other. The proclamation of tolerance emerged as an ethical program, no longer rooted in the domain of church and religion but rather growing out of practical defi-

Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance 23

nitions of humanity. This program involved detaching the concept of tolerance from the contexts of moral theology and religious politics, rooting its meaning, instead, in the tenets of natural law and in pragmatic needs. The criteria used to define differentness changed, and as a key concept in the discourse of the Enlightenment, tolerance acquired several extensions of meaning. Analyses of the evaluative frameworks, styles of thought, patterns of perception, conceptual fields and their antecedent categories that were operating in enlightened debates on tolerance are necessary to deepen modern understanding of the significant changes bequeathed to Europeans and Atlantic society by the eighteenth century. Such analyses may shed light on important, still unresolved questions. Was tolerance, for example, founded on the history of the eventual separation of church and state? Was it founded on indifference towards organized religion? Is a spiritual, undogmatic religiousness a precondition for tolerance? Did the emergence of tolerance require as a precondition the reduction of dogmatic quarrels to a few basic tenets? Was rigid orthodoxy incompatible with religious tolerance? In the eighteenth century, did the types of reasons used to support toleration shift, as is generally believed, from biblical-theological to natural law and pragmatic grounds? Were the modern processes of secularization a necessary prerequisite for the genesis of tolerance? Was the concept of the dignity of ‘man,’ understood as man being his own purpose rather than dependent on God for such purpose, a condition for the possibility of positive tolerance? Was scepticism, that is, the belief that human beings are incapable of achieving clarity and knowing the absolute truth, a theoretical prerequisite for positive tolerance? Was reciprocity in the acknowledgment of others a categorical condition for tolerance? Was tolerance, therefore, dependent on a contractual conception of society for its existence? Or, could ‘moral respect’ act as a sufficient prerequisite? These questions, however compelling, do not begin to exhaust the realms in which further research is needed. The extensions of the concept of tolerance during and by the Enlightenment bring at least six new areas into the realm of desirable tolerance research, if we are to identify both the structures of eighteenth-century discourse and the processes by which it developed. First, the subject of religious tolerance in its narrow sense, that is, the mutual toleration of the Christian confessions deserves continued study. At the same time, this complex of questions should be expanded to include the study of the sufferance of religious dissidents by specific con-

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fessions. Furthermore, what were the outlines of the sufferance of socalled second-class Christians, such as the Iberian Marranos? To what extent was toleration in external matters linked to strict internal discipline within the confessions? What were the conditions for religious nonconformity? Did this imply the repudiation of the notion of the ‘heretic’? Was a non-confessional Christianity a necessary prerequisite for religious tolerance? Second, it is important to re-examine the subject of the lengthy processes involved in establishing mutual sufferance and acknowledgment between Christians and non-Christians. At the centre of this study should be the difficulties surrounding Christian acceptance of Jews within their midst. The question is especially important in the early modern era because the stabilization of the Christian confessions after the Reformation produced ideological demarcations and renewed exclusions of the Jews from Christian society. Prior to the Reformation, had the theologically founded hope of eventually converting the Jews fostered a degree of toleration? Did orthodox theologians take up the unconditional attitude of rejection usually ascribed to them? Did philosemitism entail acknowledgment of Jewish belief as equivalent to Christian belief? Did the new theories of the governing principles of the state, or Staatsraison, and of natural law belong to the theoretical prerequisites for toleration of Jews? In the course of the eighteenth century, did the question of the sufferance of the Jews shift from the realm of religion to one of practical politics? Can a natural and immediate connection be assumed between the emergence of tolerance and the complex problem of the emancipation of the Jews? Third, the reconstruction of the discourse of enlightened tolerance needs to include an analysis of the conflicts concerning the acceptance of women as human beings enjoying rights equal to those of men. The churches clung persistently, in theology and practice, to a traditional androcentric image of women as beings with intellectual and physical endowments inferior to those of men. Can the relationship between men and women, therefore, be characterized as one between ‘established people and outsiders,’ as Norbert Elias puts it? Why did the development of theoretical arguments about the nature of women fail to produce the notion of an equality of the sexes, offering instead theories of the complementarity of the sexes in which the feminine plays a compensatory role with respect to the male? Did the use of natural law as the philosophical ground supporting tendencies towards equality in politics and society help also to foster a contrary development, arguments about gender characteristics based on parity between the two distinctly different sexes?

Towards a Reconstruction of the Discourse on Tolerance and Intolerance 25

It would be worthwhile to pursue this approach further, questioning also the common argument that the discourse about the distinctness of the sexes simply served to shore up an ancient, presumably self-evident hierarchical system of ranking between men and women. Fourth, in reconstructing enlightened discourse on the toleration of marginal groups in the Atlantic world – socially deviant people such as the poor, the mentally ill, criminals, the handicapped, homosexuals, witches, prostitutes, and others – could profitably be explored. The fact that these groups were excluded reveals more than denigrating attitudes; it also helps to delineate the principles on which conscious boundaries were drawn to define society and the quality of humanness. Socially marginalized groups may be understood as a product of social processes that involve the ascription of certain properties to people. It would be helpful to uncover the conceptual categories that inform these processes, thereby expanding our knowledge of the early modern world to include ‘social tolerance’ and the ‘social stranger.’ Fifth, discussions of the treatment of the ‘natives’ of the so-called new world gain in sophistication when considered from the perspective of newly conceptualized tolerance studies. The history of the relationship between Europe and countries overseas can no longer be described as a series of discoveries but only as a meeting of cultures. European confrontations with these non-Christian peoples posed thorny problems for the traditional missionary interpretation that presented non-Christian natives as negative types. Religious images of strangeness easily linked up with xenophobia and religious strangeness quickly transformed into notions of ethnically based inferiority. Did the natives from overseas countries perform the same role for early modern Europeans as the barbarians had done for the ancient Greeks? Is ethnocentricity perhaps normal behaviour in oral expression? Did the generalization about distance, that it can often be diminished but not abolished, characterize the European experience of ethnic distances? Answers to these questions require an unbiased reconstruction of European definitions of the Other and ‘the stranger,’ bearing in mind that strangeness and marginality are not necessarily equivalent qualities and must be strictly separated conceptually and methodologically. Sixth, the question of ‘political tolerance’ in the early modern age lies much closer to other toleration issues than hitherto perceived. Such proximity deals neither with the genetic aspect of toleration nor with the problem of historical continuity in the nineteenth century. Instead, it derives from the question of the functions of religious and confessional elements in shaping the organization and quality of political action in the

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early modern age. In both the northern Netherlands and England, for example, competing, coexisting parties – the Orange and Regency parties in the Netherlands and the Whigs and Tories in England – offered clearly delineated antagonistic programs with historical roots in religious questions. Did their immanent structures of political thought and action, set as they were against a background of representative corporate bodies, not also reflect a commitment to the toleration, sufferance, acceptance, and acknowledgment of political opponents? Need not a theory that views society as organized around individual liberty and autonomy also explicitly raise the question of the acceptance of the Other? Did not the acknowledgment of political alternatives, the acknowledgment of the different-minded political thinker, originally belong to the political discourse of the Enlightenment? Did not such a questioning perspective allow deeper insights into the structure and dynamics of the potential for conflict inherent in early modern society as well as into the specific modalities employed to settle conflicts? In reconstructing the forms, the conditions, and the dimensions of enlightened discourses on tolerance, neither their ambivalence, nor their limits ought to be suppressed. Enlightened processes themselves suggested new objects that could not be tolerated, although it did not give them names. It may well be asked whether every tolerance does not also create aporetic situations that evade human mastery.

one

Toleration and Ragion di Stato : Jews and Protestants in the Savoyard State, ca. 1650–1750 GEOFFREY SYMCOX1

The Savoyard state of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was in many respects an archetypal Counter-Reformation polity.2 Its staunchly Roman Catholic inhabitants distrusted the small religious minorities, Jewish and Protestant, who lived in their midst. The Savoyard rulers grudgingly accepted the presence of these minorities for political and economic reasons – for reason of state or ragion di stato, in Italian – not out of devotion to the ideal of tolerance.3 In normal times they kept popular hostility to the non-Catholic minorities firmly in check, but when it served their purposes – as in the massacre of Protestants in 1686 – they allowed these feelings to erupt. Popular passion was a weapon to be held in reserve and used sparingly, because it could easily spill over and threaten the social and political stability that the regime was laboriously constructing. Official policy towards the minorities was driven less by religious ideology than by political expediency: it was essentially opportunistic, the handmaid of state-building, and was always guided by reason of state.4 This policy, which we may term toleration for reason of state, would dictate the regime’s treatment of its religious minorities until the granting of civil equality to Protestants and Jews in 1848. Catholic orthodoxy permeated every aspect of official and popular culture in the Savoyard state. Throughout the Old Regime, Savoyard rulers professed an intolerant piety, setting an example that their subjects readily followed. From the mid-sixteenth century the influence of the Jesuits and the other Counter-Reformation orders was all-pervasive, both in official circles and among the populace at large. Popular religious fervour found expression in a host of lay confraternities cultivating the full gamut of public and private devotions, from the Spiritual Exercises and

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the Quarant’Ore, to processions and pilgrimages.5 The energy and resources poured into the construction or refurbishing of churches and sanctuaries bore witness to the depth of popular piety: Piedmont and Savoy are regions distinguished to this day by their profusion of baroque religious art and architecture, much of it popular in origin.6 Although Savoyard rulers, following their own version of Gallicanism, sought to distance them-selves from some of the prescriptions of the Council of Trent and were frequently at odds with the papacy, the Counter-Reformation imprinted itself profoundly on the society they ruled and radically transformed every aspect of its culture. In this oppressive atmosphere the Enlightenment produced little discernible impact.7 For a decade or two at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Savoyard government seemed open to the new ideological currents, but this false dawn soon faded and policy reverted to its customary pattern of pragmatic authoritarianism. Administrative reform proceeded, but in the traditional mode of absolutist centralization; economic dirigisme did not give way to laissez-faire. The regime remained deeply suspicious of the intelligentsia and excluded it from political influence. This conservative outlook extended to matters of religion as well: witness the entrapment and imprisonment of the heterodox philosopher Pietro Giannone in 1736. Savoyard religious policy centred on extending state jurisdiction at the expense of the clergy and the clerical courts.8 The government did not embrace the Enlightenment ideal of toleration or seek to implement it, and as long as the old regime lasted, the status of the religious minorities did not improve significantly. The question we must address, therefore, is not how the idea of toleration grew and developed in the Savoyard state during the old regime, for this never occurred. Rather we must turn the question around and ask how and why the state’s religious minorities were tolerated at all, given the religious enmities that prevailed in society and the institutionalized intolerance that characterized the regime itself. The answer is to be found principally, it would seem, in the realm of politics: in the government’s single-minded calculation of ragion di stato, which provided the underlying logic for its religious policies. The depth and fervour of Savoyard Catholicism owed much to a sense of beleaguerment dating back to the sixteenth century, when Protestantism established a strong bridgehead in the Savoyard domains and, for a time at least, threatened their territorial integrity. More than any other Italian state, the Savoyard lands were deeply touched by the Reformation, and

Jews and Protestants in the Savoyard State, ca. 1650–1750

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the trauma of sustained contact with Protestantism engendered a virulent reaction. In 1536 a revolution in Geneva threw off Savoyard rule and welcomed the Reformation. From that time the dukes of Savoy, like other Catholic sovereigns, equated Protestantism with rebellion. The proximity of Calvin’s ‘Protestant Rome’ just across their frontier seemed a constant threat to both the orthodoxy and the stability of their territories, which they strove to exorcise by guile or force: witness the failed ‘Escalade’ of 1602, one of several attempts to subvert or capture the city. This enmity endured, even though the Savoyard rulers eventually abandoned the use of overt violence; in the later eighteenth century they would found the new town of Carouge just across the border from Geneva, in an endeavour (albeit unsuccessful) to siphon off the city’s trade and so ruin it.9 For the Savoyard state, 1536 was a year fraught with dire religious consequences. Besides the secession and apostasy of Geneva, it saw the partition of the Savoyard territories among invading French, Swiss, and Spanish forces. During the long occupation that followed, the Swiss and the French authorities allowed Reformed communities to flourish and proselytize in the areas they controlled. By the time the occupation ended in 1559, and Duke Emanuel Filibert was restored to the Savoyard throne, Protestantism was firmly established in his domains: several generations of missionary activity, backed by the coercive force of the state, would be required to eradicate it.10 The last Protestant enclave originating from this period of foreign occupation, in the Marquisate of Saluzzo, was not rooted out until 1633.11 The expulsion of the Saluzzese Protestants did not put an end to confessional divisions within Savoyard state, however. Another enclave of Reformed believers remained entrenched in its midst, their existence guaranteed by solemn engagements with Savoyard rulers and by the amity of the neighbouring Protestant Swiss cantons. In the Val Pellice above Turin the Waldensians, inheritors of a tradition of religious dissent dating from the twelfth-century Poor Men of Lyon, still survived as a community. In the 1530s they had affiliated with the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and thereafter gradually came to adopt the doctrines of Calvinist Geneva, organizing themselves as a self-governing community under their pastors and elders. In 1561 the newly restored Emanuel Filibert, seeking to reunite his domains, sent his army to destroy this nest of religious and political disobedience. But the Waldensians repelled the attackers, and forced the duke to sign an agreement – the Treaty of Cavour – recognizing their right to worship as they wished inside a carefully delimited mountain enclave, the so-called Waldensian valleys.12 By

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force of arms they had compelled their ruler to grant them a limited measure of toleration. Guaranteed by the Treaty of Cavour, the Waldensian community survived, while the Protestants in the rest of the Savoyard domains were forced to convert or emigrate. As a legally tolerated religious minority (their status was in some respects analogous to that of the Savoyard state’s Jewish communities, as we shall see shortly), the Waldensians enjoyed certain rights, reconfirmed periodically by the crown. But the crown sought to reduce those rights as far as possible, within the terms of the treaty. The Waldensians were confined to their valleys, thus limiting the possibility that their heresy would contaminate the rest of the state’s population. They were constantly harassed by zealous state officials, who interpreted their privileges as restrictively as possible, and were subjected to the ministrations of state-sponsored missionaries, whose efforts were backed by the lure of tax exemptions for those who converted.13 Government measures against this nest of heretics were supported by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm, periodically whipped up by the clergy. The powerful hold exercised by the Counter-Reformation over Savoyard society can be attributed in part to the continued presence of the Waldensian community in its midst, compounded by the menace of Geneva so close to the frontier.14 Among the states of the Italian peninsula, in fact, the Savoyard domains alone harboured a Protestant minority after the late sixteenth century. For the Savoyard population, and in particular for the clergy, the Waldensians were a living reminder of the divisions engendered by the Reformation and thus were always the target of bitter hostility. The government’s policies led to growing friction that finally erupted into outright war against the Protestant minority. In the spring of 1655 Duchess-Regent Maria Cristina, acting for her son Charles Emanuel II, sent troops to attack the Waldensians on the pretext that they had resisted her authority. A massacre ensued, for her real aim was to eliminate them root and branch. The slaughter was halted by Cardinal Mazarin, who interceded under pressure from his Protestant allies, led by Oliver Cromwell.15 This foreign intervention opened a new chapter in the relationship between the Waldensians and their rulers. Britain and the Dutch Republic now joined their diplomatic and financial support to that of the Protestant Swiss cantons, hitherto the Waldensians’ sole source of external aid, thus widening the circle of protectors ready to intercede with the Savoyard government on their behalf. For the next century and a half, pressure from foreign sympathizers, whom the regime was compelled to

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respect for reason of state, would prove to be the critical factor ensuring the Waldensians’ continued survival. In 1655, following Mazarin’s intervention, the duke signed an agreement – officially termed a ‘pardon’ – with his Waldensian subjects, reaffirming the Treaty of Cavour. But it did not bring peace to the Waldensian valleys. Official persecution and chicanery continued, and roving groups of so-called Waldensian bandits kept up a guerrilla war against the government’s representatives. Finally a new agreement, again negotiated through French mediation, was signed in 1664.16 As before, external political pressure, coupled with the sheer difficulty of reducing the Waldensians by military means, had forced the Savoyard government to embrace a policy of limited toleration. Thereafter an uneasy peace prevailed in the Waldensian valleys, until the government launched a new persecution, far more terrible than the previous one, in the spring of 1686. We shall examine this episode in a moment. The origin of the Savoyard state’s Jewish minority was very different from that of its Protestant community. Whereas the Waldensians had formed an unwelcome heretical presence for centuries and were the target of periodic persecution, the Jews were for the most part relatively recent arrivals, encouraged to settle in the Savoyard territories and actively protected by the government. The Jewish communities that had formed in the Savoyard state in the Middle Ages had dwindled and dispersed during the mid-sixteenth century troubles. Duke Emanuel Filibert set out to reconstitute those communities. He encouraged the immigration of Sephardim and Marranos from Iberia, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire, intending that they should devote their capital and business skills to rebuilding his state’s backward, war-shattered economy.17 Later in the sixteenth century, these immigrants would be joined by Jewish migrants from other regions of the Italian peninsula where intolerance was growing.18 From 1565 the duke took the Savoyard Jewish community under his formal protection, granting it a condotta or charter of privileges that was regularly renewed. He persisted in this policy, defying protests from his own subjects, as well as from the Pope and Philip II of Spain.19 His policy should not be interpreted as a gesture of tolerance, offering the Jews a safe haven in a hostile world; its purpose was rather to strengthen his state. As in the case of the Waldensians, official toleration of the Jews, such as it was, was the fruit of ragion di stato. From the start the Jews were grouped in self-governing local communities, the Università degli Ebrei, all under the authority of a Christian

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magistrate, the Conservatore degli Ebrei, who represented them in their dealings with the authorities. The Jews paid a fixed sum in taxes each year, which they apportioned among their various local communities. Juridically they were held to enjoy the rights common to all humankind under the law of nature, but with certain restrictions: they could not own land, they could not worship in public, and they were required to wear a distinguishing mark on their clothing.20 They were also supposed to live in communities apart from the Christian population, so as not to pose any threat to the latter’s faith. But contrary to the practice in most of the Italian states, the Jews in the Savoyard state were not required to live in ghettos; until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as we shall see, they were free to live where they wished. In this respect their status was markedly different from that of the Waldensians, who from 1561 were forbidden to live outside their valleys: in a real sense, therefore, the Savoyard state ghettoized its Protestants long before it ghettoized its Jews. The freedoms of movement and settlement accorded Jews were dictated by the needs of state economic policy, for their appointed function was to act as rural bankers and pawnbrokers, providing capital at the local level.21 In the little country towns of Piedmont Jews lived in small scattered settlements, a pattern different from that in some other Italian states, where they tended to concentrate in the big urban centres.22 As time passed Jews assumed a greater role in the state’s strategy of mercantilist development. In the later seventeenth century they figured prominently in the government’s efforts to develop a free port at Nice:23 the Jews expelled in 1669 from Spanish Oran were allowed to settle in Nice, where they were joined in 1685 by another wave of Jewish exiles from Majorca. (Only the better-off members of the latter group were allowed to settle in Nice, however; the rest were shunted off to seek asylum in the more hospitable domains of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, at Leghorn.24) In general, relations between the Università degli Ebrei and the state remained fairly harmonious. The condotta was renewed regularly, and the government issued periodic edicts to protect its Jewish subjects against the excesses of popular anti-Semitism.25 In this respect official pragmatic toleration of the Jewish minority differed markedly from the repression directed against the Waldensians. For the government, the Protestants posed the more dangerous threat to religious orthodoxy and political stability, and the treatment meted out to them reflected these official fears. But from the middle of the seventeenth century this situation began to change. Official religious attitudes

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took on a growing militancy, and both the Jewish and the Waldensian minorities began to be subjected to increasing pressure. Behind this shift in outlook we may perhaps discern a crucial political development. The long cycle of wars that had racked northern Italy and the Savoyard state since the beginning of the century came to an end in 1659, and the government was now able to turn its attention to internal reform. The development of a centralized absolutist regime accelerated, and one of its primary aims was to eliminate islands of separate jurisdiction within the heteroclite Savoyard domains in order to create administrative uniformity.26 In this perspective the Jewish and Protestant minorities, with their separate juridical statuses and semi-autonomous communal organizations, appeared as obstacles to the smooth functioning of the developing state machine. The state’s offensive against local and communal particularism was conducted across a broad front, however, and was not directed solely at the religious minorities. Its most dramatic effects were seen in the district of Mondovì, where the government waged a campaign through the 1680s to impose a new salt gabelle, overriding the district’s ancient privileges and provoking violent rebellion.27 In the same way, at the same time, the state began a determined assault on the privileges of the Church, restricting the fiscal immunities claimed by the clergy, curbing the power of the Inquisition, and asserting its rights over vacant abbeys. The process of centralizing reform would be crowned by the creation of a network of intendants covering the entire state, under Victor Amadeus II. Throughout this period the state was becoming increasingly intolerant of regional or confessional diversity. Official policy began to consider the Jews an alien minority to be formally separated from society, as the Waldensians already were: both minorities were increasingly marginalized by the government’s drive to create a uniform bureaucratic machine extending its control to every nook and cranny of the state’s territory, and reaching ever deeper into the fabric of society. We have already made mention of the continuing repression directed against the Waldensians after 1655, but this campaign was only the most dramatic episode in a broadly based offensive against their confessional deviance, usually waged by more subtle means. Pious groups of laymen, backed by the government and urged on by the clergy, stepped up their efforts to extirpate religious dissent. Spearheading the offensive was the Compagnia di San Paolo, founded in the 1560s to combat Protestantism; its methods combined devotional exercises, proselytization, and charity,

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all closely coordinated with government policy.28 Its efforts were seconded by the Confraternity of the Holy Spirit, which supported a hostel for converts, the Ospizio dei Catecumeni.29 The Ospizio, dedicated to the conversion of both Protestants and Jews, had been established under Emanuel Filibert, but had since languished. In 1653 Cardinal Ceva generously re-endowed it and entrusted its management to the Confraternity of the Holy Spirit, which pursued its mission with vigour. By the time the Ospizio ceased operations in the revolutionary period, hundreds of Protestants and Jews had passed through its Spartan dormitories and accepted the meagre bounties it offered for conversion. Its methods were immortalized, unflatteringly, by Rousseau, who abjured his faith under its auspices in 1728.30 The reinvigorated Ospizio dei Catecumeni was not an isolated initiative. At the same time, the government was stepping up missionary activity in the Waldensian valleys, and posting an intendant there – evidently the first of this new breed of official.31 The Jewish population was coming under pressure too: new bans prohibited Jews from employing Christian servants, which the law had formerly permitted, and forbade the treatment of Christian patients by Jewish physicians.32 These symptoms betrayed a hardening of religious attitudes, which underpinned a dramatic shift in the state’s policy towards its religious minorities. In 1679 Turin’s Jews were ordered into a ghetto, and in 1686 the Waldensians were decimated in a brutal massacre. This new intolerant trend in state policy cannot be explained simply as an echo of popular religious hostilities, as has sometimes been suggested. Popular hostility was a constant, always present, and therefore it cannot be invoked as the cause of policy change at this particular moment. The shift from de facto tolerance to explicit intolerance should probably be viewed instead as the product of specific political and economic tensions at this specific moment. The ghettoization of the Turinese Jews formed part of a program of administrative reform, spurred on by an acute subsistence crisis that ravaged the Savoyard state in the years 1677 to 1680. The massacre of the Waldensians was likewise the result of political factors, but it was sparked by external pressure, from Louis XIV. Let us analyse the timing and motivation of each event in turn. In one sense, the decision to segregate Turin’s Jews was no more than the belated enforcement of an ancient law: Amadeus VIII’s Statutes of 1430 had required the Jews to live apart from the Christian population;33 therefore, the decree of 1679 simply reaffirmed this traditional norm. It can also be seen as the restatement of an earlier, abortive attempt at ghettoization, undertaken in 1620, when Duke Charles Emanuel I decreed the first extension of Turin’s urban perimeter and reorganized its inter-

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nal space.34 But simply invoking this earlier precedent cannot explain the decree that was issued in 1679. Nor can arguments about clerical pressure, or about lobbying by Turin’s merchants and artisans, who were eager to eliminate Jewish competition.35 These factors certainly weighed in the government’s decision, but they were not the determining reasons behind it. It is important to note that the edict establishing a ghetto only affected the Jews of Turin. It did not apply to the Jewish communities in the rest of the state; for them, ghettoization would come a generation later, after 1723. This difference of time and place reveals that the establishment of the ghetto at Turin was not simply the result of a generalized hostility to the Jewish population. Such motives should not be discounted, but the creation of the ghetto at Turin was motivated primarily by political concerns. It formed one element in a sweeping program of administrative reform undertaken by the duchess-regent, Maria Giovanna Battista of Savoy-Nemours, after she assumed power in 1675 on behalf of her young son Victor Amadeus II. Evidently inspired by recent French practice, she set out to turn the Savoyard domains into an ‘état bien policé,’ focusing special attention on Turin, which she sought to turn into a model of order and decorum. The logic of absolutist dirigisme behind her reform program was given added impetus by a terrible famine that struck Piedmont between 1677 and 1680, dramatically revealing the inadequacy of Turin’s administrative and charitable structures. She set up a new agency, the Consolato, to regulate economic life, and created a new Sovraintendente di Politica (modelled on the Parisian Lieutenant de Police) to maintain public order and organize famine relief, deliberately bypassing the city council and its officials.36 These reforms merged with a project of urban development already under way. In 1669 Turin’s perimeter had been extended for a second time.37 This new phase of the city’s expansion involved a conscious effort to differentiate urban space according to function: in the new extension a zone of government buildings was laid out close to the ducal palace, clearly distinguished from the residential quarters adjacent to them.38 This program of urban restructuring also aimed to segregate certain social groups and to assign each of them a separate place in the city’s spatial hierarchy. Between 1677 and 1680 the city’s poor, swelled by the beggars who were flocking to the city during the famine, were confined in a new poorhouse, the Ospizio di Carità; a big new hospital was opened to care for the sick; the Albergo di Virtù was established to house Protestant converts; and the Jews were ordered into the new ghetto.39 Given this context, the establishment of the ghetto at Turin should be

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viewed as one segment of a broadly conceived strategy of administrative reform and urban restructuring, catalyzed by the pressures unleashed by the subsistence crisis; it formed just one part of a renfermement of the city’s marginal social groups, proceeding hand in hand with the building of the new poorhouse, the hospital, and the Albergo di Virtù. The close linkage between these initiatives emerges clearly from the sequence of property transfers that provided the different institutions with their locations in the new zone just added to the city. The site originally assigned to the Jewish ghetto was reassigned to the Albergo di Virtù; the ghetto was then established in buildings originally earmarked for the poorhouse, which was in turn given new premises in another city block nearby. The Jews moved into their new quarters in August 1680.40 The linkage between these initiatives suggests that the state’s policy of segregation was not aimed specifically at the Jews, but at a variety of social groups defined as marginal, and that it formed one element in the master plan to reorder the spatial and social configuration of the capital city. The impulse behind the creation of the ghetto seems therefore to have been not so much religious hostility as a typically absolutist desire for administrative order. The massacre of the Waldensians in the spring of 1686 was also motivated essentially by secular rather than religious factors: as with the Jews, ragion di stato would be the determinant of policy. Hatred of these heretics had been a constant among both the Savoyard elite and the masses since time immemorial, and although such hatred accounts for the ferocity of the attack, it does not explain why it took place at this particular moment.41 The direct cause of Victor Amadeus II’s latter-day crusade was pressure from Louis XIV, whose revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October 1685 sent a wave of Huguenot refugees across the Alps into the Waldensian valleys. The French king demanded that Victor Amadeus stop the Waldensians from giving aid to the fleeing Huguenots and urged him to follow his own example by converting them, by force if necessary. At this critical moment the Waldensians found themselves politically isolated. France, which had mediated the settlements of 1655 and 1664 on their behalf, was now their declared enemy. The Protestant states of Europe, cowed by the power of France, did not intercede; no Cromwell threatened vengeance, no Milton thundered in their defence. Only the Protestant Swiss cantons attempted to mediate between them and their ruler, but to no avail. International Protestantism, which had hitherto guaranteed their survival, now failed them, leaving the way open for Louis XIV and Victor Amadeus II to launch the most terrible of all the dragonnades.

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For months Victor Amadeus tried to evade the French king’s demands, but finally, in the absence of countervailing pressure from Protestant Europe, he was compelled to accede. On 31 January 1686 he issued an edict, specifically invoking Louis XIV’s example, which banned Protestant worship in the Waldensian valleys, ordered schoolmasters and pastors into exile, and required that children be raised in the Catholic faith.42 In essence Victor Amadeus abrogated the Treaty of Cavour. This edict was the first in a series of measures whose cumulative purpose was to extinguish the Waldensian community. Once embarked on the course of action dictated to him by Louis XIV, Victor Amadeus put aside his hesitations and determined to extract maximum benefit from it, by rooting out the heretics once and for all. He was by no means an unwilling participant in the atrocities that followed, and, in fact, paraded them publicly as proof of his zeal for the Catholic faith.43 He calculated that besides imposing religious unity on his domains, the attack on the Waldensians would bring him a valuable political dividend, by eliminating an enclave of autonomous jurisdiction and a potential source of opposition to the centralized state machine that he was then perfecting. The ensuing persecution – or genocide – unleashed the religious passions simmering just below the surface of Savoyard society. In April 1686, on the pretext that the Waldensians had taken up arms to defy their sovereign, French and Savoyard troops assaulted the valleys.44 These troops were supported by contingents of local Piedmontese militias, drafted specially for the campaign, who lent themselves enthusiastically to the carnage. Perhaps two thousand Waldensians were killed, and almost all the rest were captured. After languishing for months in prison, during which time many of them died, the survivors were exiled to Geneva, which offered them temporary refuge, and thence to Württemberg and Brandenburg. Those who had converted while in prison were resettled in the malarial flatlands around Vercelli, while the government colonized their ancestral valleys with Catholic peasants. The Waldensians had ceased to exist as an organized community, and the Treaty of Cavour was now a dead letter. But despite the massacres and the ensuing diaspora, the Waldensian community would be restored to life. In the autumn of 1689, a band of Waldensians and Huguenots marched from Geneva to reconquer the valleys, in a campaign that became known as the Glorieuse Rentrée.45 They were still entrenched the following spring, when Victor Amadeus II seized the opportunity offered by the outbreak of the Nine Years War to throw off Louis XIV’s political and military tutelage, and joined the antiFrench alliance headed by William III.46 At a stroke, the international

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guarantees underpinning the Waldensians’ existence as a tolerated minority were restored. As the price of his military and financial aid, William III demanded that Victor Amadeus publicly restore the Waldensians to their former tolerated status, as defined by the Treaty of Cavour. On 20 October 1690 the duke reluctantly agreed to these conditions, but delayed as long as possible in making them public.47 Meanwhile the exiled Waldensians started trickling back to their valleys and rebuilding their shattered communities. Not until May 1694, however, and then only under extreme pressure from William III, did Victor Amadeus finally issue a public edict, the so-called Edict of Toleration, restoring their privileges.48 Religious motives played no part in his decision: reason of state alone, in the shape of his all-encompassing need for allies against France, compelled him to take this – for him obviously distasteful – step. The Edict of 1694 would serve as the Waldensians’ charter of liberties until the French revolutionary armies swept into Piedmont a century later, bringing religious toleration and civil equality in their wake. It inaugurated a new era in the relationship between the Waldensians and their rulers. It tied the latter’s hands more effectively than the Treaty of Cavour had done, for this time, guarantees of tolerance were enshrined in a solemn treaty with foreign powers. Protection from outside now became the cornerstone of the Waldensians’ liberties. Any renewed persecution would de facto constitute a breach of an international engagement – something that Victor Amadeus and his successors were unwilling to risk. After the military alliance with the Maritime Powers lapsed in 1696, and again in 1713, the Savoyard government could perhaps have torn up the toleration edict and launched fresh persecutions. But again ragion di stato was the prime consideration; any measures against the Waldensians would jeopardize an alliance of great potential value – as events during the War of the Austrian Succession would demonstrate – and antagonize major trading partners.49 From this time on the Protestant powers, headed by Britain, came to exercise a kind of protectorate over the Waldensians. Successive British ambassadors, following their government’s instructions, lent aid and support to the ‘poor Vaudois,’ as the official correspondence termed them. Britain and the Dutch Republic sent precious financial help to the beleaguered Waldensians, enabling them to hire schoolmasters, buy books, and pay pastors – and thereby to survive culturally.50 The patronage of the Protestant powers ensured that there would be no more massacres and that the Waldensian community would survive materially and intellectually. But neither their moral support nor the toleration edict could expunge the Savoyard government’s hostility

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to the Waldensians: it merely found other ways to express that hostility, short of outright persecution. Victor Amadeus II had been reluctant to publish the edict because he knew that it would provoke a rupture in his relations with the papacy. Tensions had already been running high between the Curia and the Savoyard court over a wide range of issues – tax exemptions for Church lands, revenues from vacant abbeys, and the jurisdiction of the papal nuncio and the Inquisition, which the Savoyard magistrates sought to restrict. The duke feared that for the Pope the toleration edict would be the last straw.51 These expectations proved accurate. With the publication of the edict, relations between Rome and Turin reached a bitter impasse, and a generation of contentious negotiations was to follow, until the two courts finally reached a settlement in 1727. As we shall see, the ups and downs of the negotiations with the papacy became a critical determinant in Victor Amadeus’s policies towards the religious minorities in his state, both Protestant and Jewish. For tactical reasons, to cover his theological flanks against papal imputations of unorthodoxy, he displayed rigour and intolerance towards the Waldensians – as far as his engagements with the Protestant powers allowed. His policy towards the Jews, however, was more ambiguous, and even machiavellian. For a time, as we shall see, he tentatively extended the rights of the Jewish community and offered it greater protection against popular and clerical anti-Semitism, perhaps as an oblique warning to the papacy of what he might do if pushed too far.52 Together, these two approaches worked as carrot and stick, prodding and enticing the papal negotiators down the path to the Concordat of 1727. The toleration of religious minorities in Victor Amadeus’s hands thus served as the instrument of a policy whose ultimate goal was to strengthen the state’s jurisdiction at the expense of its traditional foe, the papacy. The 1694 edict may have restored the Waldensians as a community and allowed them to worship once more as they chose, but it did not guarantee them an easy life. From the first, the Savoyard authorities interpreted the edict as a concession born of dire necessity, to be implemented as restrictively as possible. Bureaucratic foot-dragging and chicanery quickly revealed the limits to the protection it provided. Over the next generation the Protestant community would suffer severely at the hands of the regime: its privileges would be curtailed, and many of its members would be driven into exile.53 Age-old intolerance could not be eradicated by one new law.

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And as before, official treatment of the Protestant minority would veer opportunistically with each shift in the political situation. In 1696 Victor Amadeus II signed a peace treaty with Louis XIV, which provided him with an opportunity to whittle away the Protestant population in his domains. During the troubles after 1686 and the ensuing war, a considerable number of Huguenot refugees had settled in the Waldensian valleys. As foreigners, however, they were not protected by the edict of 1694, which applied only to the duke’s own Waldensian subjects. In 1698, following the exact letter of the peace treaty, and evidently hoping to curry favour with Louis XIV, the duke expelled these Huguenot refugees, about three thousand in all.54 This first expulsion was a portent of others to follow. Renewed alliance with the Protestant powers in 1703, during the War of the Spanish Succession, curbed further demonstrations of official intolerance for a time, but after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 Savoyard policy reverted to its habitual pattern. The treaty added the formerly French valley of Pragelato, with its Protestant population, to Savoyard territory. This newly acquired enclave was not covered by the edict of 1694, and Victor Amadeus held – in defiance of his former allies’ interpretation of the treaty – that the French laws banning Protestant worship in Pragelato remained in force.55 He exiled the Protestant pastors and schoolmasters from the valley, and forbade its inhabitants to communicate with their coreligionists in neighbouring valleys. These restrictions were followed by others, culminating in an edict of June 1730, which outlawed Protestant worship in the valley of Pragelato and ordered the Protestants there to convert or go into exile. Over twelve hundred chose to leave.56 With their departure the enclave of Pragelato became wholly Catholic. It also lost its semi-autonomous status and, as Victor Amadeus intended, was absorbed into the uniform administrative structure of the state. Meanwhile, with the end of the war, zealous officials in the other valleys revived old regulations dealing with funerals, the building of Protestant temples, and the observance of Catholic feast days – matters not defined by the edict of 1694 – to harass the Waldensians. The Waldensians appealed to Britain and the other Protestant powers, which responded by urging Victor Amadeus to ease the pressure.57 These issues came to a head with the publication of Victor Amadeus’s new compilation of laws, the Regie Costituzioni of 1723, a crucial element in his program of centralizing reform. For years a team of legal experts had sifted through the corpus of Savoyard jurisprudence, purging it of contradictions and archaisms, in order to produce a uniform code of law applicable throughout the state.58 Despite the jurists’ lucubrations, however, the provisions of

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the Costituzioni dealing with the Protestants were oddly inconsistent: the code preserved a number of old laws rendered obsolete by the edict of toleration, yet failed to include the edict itself.59 (This omission may have been dictated by the current state of Victor Amadeus’s negotiations with the papacy, then entering their most delicate phase.) The punitive clauses left in the Costituzioni were immediately enforced, provoking a renewed round of protests from the Waldensians and their foreign protectors. To deflect this criticism, Victor Amadeus II sought the British ambassador’s advice on revising the offending clauses.60 The resultant modifications – which the ambassador supposedly approved, although the British government later disavowed them – were originally to have been incorporated in the new edition of the Costituzioni, promulgated in 1729. By then, however, Victor Amadeus II had decided (again perhaps to avoid conflict with the Pope) to draft a separate edict bringing together all the laws and regulations dealing with the Waldensians. This comprehensive edict, in effect a codicil to the Costituzioni, was made public on 20 June 1730. It marked the end of the process of redefining the Waldensians’ status begun by the treaty of 1690, and established the system of limited toleration under which they would live for the rest of the century. It resolved the earlier areas of dispute – work on Catholic feast days, burial rights, and so on – in terms generally acceptable to the Waldensians and their foreign patrons.61 It clarified other issues: the Waldensians could receive money from abroad, but must declare it; they could import books, under strict controls; they could not build new places of worship. To this extent the edict of 1730 essentially reaffirmed the system of toleration set up in 1694, within all the Waldensian valleys except for Pragelato. But the new edict placed as narrow a construction as possible on the 1694 edict’s terms. Since Huguenot refugees were not protected by the latter edict, any who still remained in the Savoyard lands were ordered to leave – like their co-religionists from Pragelato. The new edict also defined as relapsed heretics those Waldensians who had converted to Catholicism (mainly during the persecution of 1686) but who had since returned to their original faith. They were required to reconvert or emigrate, on pain of death. Britain, the Dutch Republic, and the Protestant Swiss cantons, now joined by Brandenburg and Sweden, lodged vehement protests at this stipulation, which they claimed directly contravened the terms of the 1694 edict. The Savoyard government disregarded their pleas: over the next months close to five hundred former converts joined the Waldensians of Pragelato and the Huguenot refugees on the road to exile.62

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This mass exodus would prove to be the last great upheaval in the troubled relationship between the Waldensians and their Savoyard rulers until the French Revolution. The modified Costituzioni of 1729 and the edict of 1730 defined the legal status of the Waldensian community for the rest of the century. Behind these enactments we may discern, besides the obvious motives of religious antipathy, the imperatives of state-building that had always guided Savoyard policy. The net effect of these laws was not merely to restrict the Waldensians’ religious freedom as far as was compatible with the edict of 1694, but also to extend the political and administrative control exercised by the central government over the territories occupied by the Protestant population. Relations between the Waldensians and the government now entered a more stable, although far from friendly, phase. A modus vivendi of sorts had finally been achieved. There would be no more massacres, no more forced migrations; for the rest of the century a cold war of administrative restrictions and legal subterfuges would replace the violence of the previous decades. Secure in the protection of the Protestant powers, the Waldensian community survived, although it did not prosper, until the French Revolution confronted it with new hopes, and new perils. The Regie Costituzioni of 1723 and 1729 would prove to be of decisive significance for the Jewish community, just as they had for the Waldensians. The new legal codes extended the requirement of ghettoization from Turin to all the other Jewish communities of Savoy and, by abolishing the old office of the Conservatore degli Ebrei, transformed the way they were governed, bringing them into direct relations with the machinery of the state. These changes are directly traceable to the urge for administrative uniformity that animated every aspect of Savoyard reformism and that found expression in the Costituzioni. In a sense, the anomaly of partial ghettoization (only the Turinese Jews had been ghettoized thus far) was now eliminated, and the legal and administrative condition of all the Jewish communities was made uniform. As they had in the case of the Waldensians, the Costituzioni opened a new chapter in the relationship between the Jewish minority and the Savoyard state. But ghettoization, and the severe restrictions it entailed, marked a sudden reversal after a period during which the Savoyard state’s Jews had enjoyed a higher degree of freedom and official protection than perhaps at any previous time. In the years immediately after the War of the Spanish Succession, when relations with the papacy were at their lowest point, the Savoyard government took some small steps to ameliorate the condi-

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tion of its Jewish subjects. The legal ban on Jewish ownership of real property was eased through a series of cases over the next decade in which Savoyard magistrates gave tentative approval to the right of Jews to acquire and dispose of landed property.63 At the same time the Savoyard authorities intervened to protect Jewish families whose children had been seized and baptized against their will. Between 1707 and 1723 half a dozen such incidents occurred, and each time, reversing its traditional stance, the government declared the baptisms invalid and restored the children to their parents.64 As a recent study has shown, both the frequency of these cases and the government’s response to them were totally unprecedented.65 Victor Amadeus II and his legal officials had apparently chosen to use this issue as a weapon in their conflict with the Pope. What was really at stake here was the state’s jurisdictional claims against the Church. The Jews were merely pawns in this struggle; it was not altruism, but the desire to undercut the authority of the Church, that led Victor Amadeus’s magistrates to defend the Jewish parents whose children had been forcibly or surreptitiously baptized. Since these baptisms were stage-managed by the clergy and adjudicated by the ecclesiastical courts, for the secular magistrates to deny their validity was to strike a blow at the influence of the Church. It is significant, however, that these magistrates made no effort to stop the forced baptism of Protestant children, but in fact abetted it, indicating that their actions were motivated by a specific political concern, and not by a general desire to eliminate such abuses.66 By the time the first version of the Regie Costituzioni was published in 1723, the government’s attitude to its Jewish subjects was changing. It seems that the Savoyard authorities had decided they no longer needed to play the pro-Jewish card in their negotiations with the papacy, and had switched tactics.67 They apparently calculated now that they could better achieve their ends by ghettoizing their Jewish population, knowing that such an expression of Catholic religious zeal would be extremely gratifying to the papacy, while it cost them nothing. They signalled their intentions obliquely: state intervention against forced baptisms ceased, and the ban on Jewish ownership of property was reaffirmed.68 Meanwhile, in a parallel although not unconnected development the new Costituzioni, impelled by the logic of administrative rationalization, radically altered the status of the Jewish community, and as one historian has observed, brought about ‘a clear deterioration’ in its position.69 One objective of the Costituzioni was to bring order to the illogical patchwork of old laws relating to the Jews. But the new legal code also had to make

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sense of the especially anomalous situation that had resulted from Victor Amadeus’s conquest in 1707 of parts of the adjoining Duchy of Monferrato, with its variegated Jewish communities.70 The acquisition of the new territory posed a host of legal and administrative problems, for the Jews of Monferrato were governed by several different sets of laws, which were often at odds with Savoyard practice. The important Jewish community of Casale, for example, had formed part of the domains of the Gonzaga of Mantua, whose laws were relatively liberal, while that of Alessandria had lived by the more restrictive laws of the Spanish-ruled Duchy of Milan. Neither of these sets of privileges conformed to the norms prevailing in the Savoyard territories. The drafters of the Costituzioni therefore set out to establish a standard body of law that would apply to all the Jewish communities throughout the different Savoyard territories – including, it might be added, the important one at Nice, which had hitherto lived under a somewhat different legal regime from that obtaining in Piedmont.71 The 1723 Costituzioni abolished the office of Conservatore degli Ebrei; henceforth all Jewish communities would deal directly with the relevant state officials, and not through this intermediary figure. This administrative transformation was of minor significance, however, compared with the wave of ghettoization that soon followed. The Costituzioni did not specifically order that the Jews be segregated, but merely suggested that this be done where circumstances permitted; ghettoization was not formally required until the second edition of the Costituzioni, in 1729.72 Nevertheless, the creation of ghettoes proceeded rapidly. In some instances the initiative came from town councils; in others it came from state officials. In 1723 the first steps were taken to establish ghettoes at Ivrea, Chieri, and Carmagnola; the next year it was the turn of Saluzzo, Mondovì, Alessandria, Asti, and Biella; a few other towns followed suit over the next few years. The new edition of the Costituzioni in 1729 provoked a final surge of ghettoization, culminating in the establishment of a ghetto at Nice in 1733.73 The process set in motion by the segregation of Turin’s Jews in 1679–80 was now complete. In accordance with the logic of absolutist order, a uniform regime had been created for all the different Jewish communities throughout the Savoyard state. The process of ghettoization brought to completion in the decade after 1723 marks a turning point in the relationship between the Savoyard state and its Jewish minority. Ghettoization transformed the structure and legal status of the Jewish communities, defining them as

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alien and cutting them off from the rest of society in a way hitherto unknown in the Savoyard lands. But it would be simplistic to ascribe this change to the widespread anti-Semitism shared by the state’s elite, its masses, and its clergy, powerful and pervasive though this sentiment undoubtedly was. Rather, the decision to establish formal ghettos was driven by political and administrative motives. The Jewish community had always been defined as a separate social entity, distinct from the rest of the state’s population; ghettoization was simply the final step in the process of defining this separateness and giving it concrete judicial form. Confined and enumerated in their ghettoes, the state’s Jews could now be administered, monitored, and taxed more effectively. And as with the Waldensians, confined to their valleys, the risk that they would contaminate the Catholic majority would be minimized. In this sense, therefore, the ghettoization of the Jewish population formed part of a much broader political process: the ordering and disciplining of state and society that the Savoyard rulers had pursued steadily and single-mindedly for well over a century, and which culminated in the sweeping reform program of Victor Amadeus II. The edicts of 1694 and 1730, and the legal reforms embodied in the Regie Costituzioni, set the tone for relations between the Savoyard regime and its religious minorities for the rest of the eighteenth century. In each of these enactments, as in the administrative measures that flowed from them, religious policy had been guided primarily by the dictates of ragion di stato. Under the protection of these laws, Jews and Waldensians were accorded legal recognition as tolerated communities. For pragmatic reasons they were permitted to exist, but as communities apart, of inferior status, hedged about with restrictions. Although they were tolerated in the legal sense of the term, they were never accorded toleration in the sense that the Enlightenment understood it. The Savoyard authorities never accepted the concept of religious diversity, and its corollary, mutual respect and tolerance between different faiths; they never regarded religion as a private matter to be left to the individual conscience, free of state prescription; nor were they willing to concede the possibility that alternative forms of religious belief might be equally valid and thus equally deserving of state protection. Through the eighteenth century official attitudes to the Jewish and Protestant minorities remained cast in the mould of the Counter-Reformation: the Savoyard rulers and their minions only tolerated the heretics and unbelievers in their domains because the interest of the state demanded it.

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Notes 1 I am most grateful to Luciano Allegra and Jonathan Israel for their valuable comments on this essay. 2 I use the term ‘the Savoyard state’ to describe the group of territories ruled by the House of Savoy in this period, comprising the principality of Piedmont with the Valle d’Aosta, the Duchy of Savoy, and the County of Nice. 3 The state’s total population ca. 1700 was about 1.4 million; Karl J. Beloch, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, 3 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1937–61), vol. 3, 286ff. The Protestant population on the eve of the massacres in 1686 numbered perhaps 15,000; a total for the Jewish population is not available, but the Turin ghetto, by far the largest Jewish community, numbered 774 souls by 1702; that of Nice, the second largest, numbered about 350 in 1730. On the population of the Turin ghetto, see Luciano Allegra, ‘A Model of Jewish Devolution: Turin in the Eighteenth Century,’ Jewish History 7 (2) (1993), 29–58. 4 See the definition of the term in Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State and the Greatness of Cities, trans. by P.J. and D.P. Waley (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), 3: ‘State is a stable rule over a people and Reason of State is the knowledge of the means by which such a dominion may be founded, preserved and extended.’ Botero (1548–1617) served as an adviser to Duke Charles Emanuel I (r. 1580–1630), and tutor to his children. 5 Achille Erba, La Chiesa sabauda tra Cinque e Seicento: Ortodossia tridentina, gallicanesimo savoiardo e assolutismo ducale (1580–1630) (Rome: Herder, 1979); Angelo Torre, ‘Politics Cloaked in Worship: State, Church and Local Power in Piedmont, 1570–1770,’ Past and Present, no. 134 (Feb. 1992); and Angelo Torre, Il consumo di devozioni: Religione e comunità nelle campagne dell’Ancien Régime (Venice: Marsilio, 1995). 6 Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600–1750, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu, 3 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) vol. 3, ch. 3. The popular baroque art of Savoy is finally attracting the scholarly attention it merits; see Dominique Peyre (ed.), Chemins du baroque, vol. 1, Art religieux des Vallées de Savoie; vol. 2, Tarentaise; vol. 3, Maurienne (Chambéry: FACIM / Les Fontaines de Siloé, 1994). 7 Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore: Da Muratori a Beccaria (Turin: Einaudi, 1969), ch. 3; and Franco Venturi, Saggi sull’Europa illuminista, vol. 1, Alberto Radicati di Passerano (Turin: Einaudi, 1954), esp. ch. 2. 8 Maria Teresa Silvestrini, La politica della religione: Il governo ecclesiastico nello Stato Sabaudo del XVIII secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1997). 9 André Corboz, Invention de Carouge 1772–1792 (Lausanne: Payot, 1968). 10 Ruth Kleinman, Saint François de Sales and the Protestants (Geneva: Droz, 1962).

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11 Arturo Pascal, Il marchesato di Saluzzo e la riforma protestante, 1548–1588 (Florence: Sansoni, 1960). Cf. Ordine (23 Sept. 1633) requiring the Protestants of Saluzzo to convert or leave, in Felice and Camillo Duboin (eds.), Raccolta per ordine di materia delle leggi ... negli Stati sardi sino all’8 dicembre 1798, 23 vols. (Turin: Mussano, 1818–1869: hereafter cited as Duboin), vol. 2, 154. 12 The literature on the Waldensians is enormous: for a general orientation, with bibliography, see Augusto Armand-Hugon, Storia dei Valdesi, vol. 2, Dal sinodo di Chanforan all’emancipazione (Turin: Claudiana, 1974). 13 Ibid., 69; Mario Viora, Storia delle leggi sui Valdesi di Vittorio Amedeo II (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1930), 7ff. 14 For a statement of these fears, see the copy of the patent authorizing the establishment of a hospice for Protestant converts at Turin, 1 Jan. 1648: Biblioteca Reale, Turin (hereafter BRT), Miscellanea Storia Patria (hereafter MSP), 161 bis, no. 82. 15 Patenti di grazia, o perdono (18 Aug. 1655), mediated by the French ambassador Servien, in Duboin, vol. 2, 198–202. The massacre was commemorated by Milton (then Cromwell’s Latin Secretary) in the sonnet ‘Avenge O Lord Thy Slaughter’d Saints,’ and was described in detail by Samuel Morland (Milton’s friend, and Cromwell’s envoy to the Savoyard court) in The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont (London: Henry Hills, 1656). See also Geoffrey Symcox, ‘Britain and Victor Amadeus II, Or the Use and Abuse of Allies,’ in Stephen B. Baxter (ed.), England’s Rise to Greatness 1660–1763 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 151–84. 16 Gratia concessa da S.A.R. alli Huomini delle Valli (14 Feb. 1664), in Giovanni Battista Borelli (ed.), Editti antichi, e nuovi de’ Sovrani Prencipi della Real Casa di Savoia ... (Turin: Bartolomeo Zappata, 1681; hereafter cited as Borelli), 1281; cf. Viora, Storia, 22. 17 Background in M. Anfossi, Gli Ebrei in Piemonte (Turin: Regia Università di Torino, 1914), 7ff; Renata Segre (ed.), The Jews in Piedmont, 3 vols (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Tel Aviv University, 1988; hereafter cited as Segre), vol. 1, xlviii ff. 18 Attilio Milano, Storia degli Ebrei in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1963), ch. 5. 19 Privilege granting Jews the right of settlement (4 Sept. 1572), in Segre, vol. 1, 478–85; Philip II’s expression of opposition (16 Nov. 1572), 497; negotiations with the Pope (from June 1573), 507ff. 20 These restrictions date back to the Constitutions of Amadeus VIII (1430); Borelli, 1223–6. Cf. the opinion of the Consiglio dei Memoriali (19 Jan. 1724), in Segre, vol. 2, 1397; order requiring the wearing of an external sign, 13 Mar. 1603, in Borelli, 1227.

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21 Interest was regulated by the government; e.g., the order fixing a maximum of 18% (3 Oct. 1587), Borelli, loc. cit. 22 As recalled by Primo Levi in The Periodic Table, trans. Raymond Rosenthal, (New York: Schocken, 1988), 4. So, e.g., the Jewish community of Fossano in 1713 numbered 135 persons; that of Cuneo in 1718, 73 adults and 10 infants; that of Ivrea had only 10 adult males in 1726: figures from Segre, 2:1335, 1354; and 3:1445. 23 Salvatore Foa, ‘La politica economica della Casa Savoia verso gli Ebrei dal secolo XVI fino alla rivoluzione francese. Il portofranco di Villafranca (Nizza),’ Supplement to Rassegna mensile di Israel (Rome, 1961). 24 Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 157–8. 25 Penalties for those who insulted or harmed members of the Jewish community were regularly re-enacted; Borelli, 1227 (order of 1584), 1237 (1610), and 1255 (1662). They repeat a clause of Amadeus VIII’s Constitutions of 1430 (cited on 1223). 26 Henri Costamagna, ‘Pour une histoire de l’Intendenza dans les états de terre-ferme de la maison de Savoie à l’époque moderne,’ Bollettino Storico– Bibliografico Subalpino (hereafter BSBS) 83, pt. 2 (1985), 390. Fiscal policy became more systematic with the establishment in 1661 of a series of Delegazioni to reform the land tax: Daniele Borioli, Magda Ferraris, and Antonio Premoli, ‘La perequazione dei tributi nel Piemonte sabaudo e la realizzazione della riforma fiscale nella prima metà del XVIII secolo,’ BSBS 83, pt. 1 (1985), 148ff; Claudio Rosso, ‘Il Seicento,’ in Giuseppe Ricuperati (ed.), Il Piemonte sabaudo: Stato e territorio in età moderna (Turin: UTET, 1995), 173– 260. 27 On the growth of the state machinery and the revolt of Mondovì, see Geoffrey W. Symcox, Victor Amadeus II: Absolutism in the Savoyard State 1675–1730 (London: Thames and Hudson; and Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), ch. 5 and 6; cf. Giorgio Lombardi (ed.), La guerra del sale (1680–1699): Rivolte e frontiere del Piemonte barocco, 3 vols. (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1986). 28 Emanuele Tesauro, Istoria della venerabile Compagnia della Fede Cattolica sotto l’invocazione di San Paolo nell’augusta città di Torino, 2 vols. (Turin: Bartolomeo Zappata, 1701); new ed. by Anna Cantalupi (Turin: Archivio Storico Della Compagnia di San Paolo, 2003); hereafter cited as Tesauro. Mario Abrate, Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, 1563–1963: IV Centenario, 2 vols. (Turin: Istituto Bancario San Paolo, 1963), vol. 1, 68ff; Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 110ff.

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29 Background in Segre, vol. 1, lviii. The inclusion of Jews in the Ospizio’s mandate was apparently intended to disarm criticism of the duke’s decision to permit Jewish immigration. See also Carla Torre Navone, ‘L’arciconfraternità e la chiesa dello Spirito Santo nella storia,’ in L’arciconfraternità e la chiesa dello Spirito Santo in Torino (Turin: Tipografia Adorno, 1987); Luciano Allegra, ‘L’Ospizio dei Catecumeni di Torino,’ BSBS 88 (1990); and Luciano Allegra, ‘L’antisemitismo come risorsa politica: Battesimi forzati e ghetti nel Piemonte del Settecento,’ Quaderni Storici, new series, no. 84 (Dec. 1993). Both articles are reprinted in his Identità in bilico: Il ghetto ebraico di Torino nel Settecento (Turin: Zamorani, 1996). 30 See Les confessions, ed. by Jacques Voisine (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 65ff. Cf. E. Gaillard, ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Turin,’ Annales de la société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 32 (1950–52). 31 Missionary activity was run by the Order of SS. Maurizio e Lazzaro, an agency of the government; Armand-Hugon, Storia, vol. 2, 114–15; Tesauro, vol. 1, 31–2; Edict (10 Feb. 1679) reorganizing the Albergo di Virtù (for Protestants from the Valle di Luserna who converted), and noting the appointment of the intendant Beraudo; Borelli, 224–6. 32 Bans of 1662 and 1673 reversed the law of 1582 allowing Jews to employ Christian servants; Duboin, vol. 2, 319, 384. In 1662 the Turin Senate barred Jewish doctors from treating Christians; Foa, 101. 33 ‘Iudei debent a vicinis, et cohabitatione fidelium separari, & in suum locum clausum recludi.’ Borelli, 1223. 34 In 1619 when Duke Charles Emanuel I added an extension to the city, the socalled città nuova, he ordered the Jewish community to take up residence in a designated area of it. But this order was not enforced; it was probably intended merely to extort money from the Jewish community. See the petition by the Università degli Ebrei, 16 Sept. 1621, in Segre, vols. 2, 980. 35 Foa, 61; Allegra, ‘L’antisemitismo,’ 885. 36 See the anonymous pamphlet, Lettera d’un Signore Piemontese ad un Gentiluomo Romano, in cui si riferisce il Governo, e le limosine fatte da Madama Reale nella Penuria universale dell’anno passato (Turin: Bartolomeo Zappata, 1678), copy in BRT, MSP 32 (22). The office of Sovraintedente di Politica proved shortlived, however. For an overview, see Geoffrey Symcox, ‘La reggenza della seconda Madama Reale (1675–1684),’ in Giuseppe Ricuperati (ed.), Storia di Torino, vol. 4, La città fra crisi e ripresa (1630–1730) (Turin: Einaudi, 2002), 197–244. 37 The first expansion took place in 1619; the third and final phase was completed after 1714. On the development of Turin’s urban plan, see Martha D. Pollak, Turin 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture and the Creation of the

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38 39 40

41 42 43

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46 47 48 49

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Geoffrey Symcox Absolutist Capital (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), esp. ch. 6 and 7, and Geoffrey Symcox, ‘From Commune to Capital: The Transformation of Turin, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,’ in Robert Oresko et al. (eds.), Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Edicts of 16 Dec. 1675 and 22 Jan. 1678, in Borelli, 932–4. The relocation of the arsenal to the city’s periphery was another part of this strategy. On the reform of charity, see Cavallo, Charity and Power, 129ff. Luigi Cibrario, Storia di Torino, 2 vols. (Turin: Fontana, 1846), vol. 2, 532. The order for the Jews to move into the ghetto was dated 2 Aug. 1679 (Borelli, 1259), but they did not actually do so until a year later; Segre, vol. 2, 1189. Even then some Jews continued to live outside the ghetto; in October 1687 a fresh order required them to move there; ibid., 1213. For this episode see Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, 93–9, 102–4. Edict, 31 Jan. 1686, in Duboin, vol. 2, 240–2. See his cynical claim to this effect, made to the Pope: Mario Viora, ‘Su Innocenzo XI e la persecuzione dei Valdesi nel 1686,’ in Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi (hereafter BSSV), no. 55 (Apr. 1930). Edicts of 9 Apr. 1686, ordering the Waldensians to lay down their arms, and 26 May 1686 declaring them guilty of lèse-majesté for not doing so, in Duboin, vol. 2, 243, 247. The best overview of these events is in the long series of articles by Arturo Pascal, ‘Le Valli Valdesi negli anni del martirio e della gloria, 1686–1690,’ in BSSV, from no. 67 (1937) to no. 124 (Dec. 1968). See the narrative attributed to Henri Arnaud (actually by Vincenzo Minutoli), Histoire de la Glorieuse Rentrée des Vaudois dans leurs Vallées (Cassel, 1710; repr. Geneva, 1879). Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, 102–5. On these negotiations, see Viora, Storia, 189ff. Edict of 23 May 1694, revoking the edicts of 31 Jan. and 9 Apr. 1686, in Duboin, vol. 2, 257–9. Britain depended heavily on the import of Piedmontese raw silk. On the importance of the silk trade to the Piedmontese economy, see Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, 187, 209. E.g., on 11 Mar. 1730 the Earl of Essex was instructed to provide ‘the best assistance to the Vaudois and other Protestants yet remaining within the Dominions of that King’; cited in Guido Quazza, Il problema italiano e l’equilibrio europeo 1720–1738 (Turin: Deputazione Subalpina di Storia Patria, 1965), 145 n35. Queen Mary of England established a regular fund for the Waldensians in 1692, and the States-General voted periodic subsidies; Viora, Storia, 342.

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51 Viora, ibid., 220–41. In August 1694 the Papal Inquisition condemned the edict. The Turin Senate then forbade publication of the Inquisition’s decree; see the Rescritto senatorio, 31 Aug. 1694, in Duboin, vol. 2, 260. 52 This is the argument advanced by Allegra in ‘L’antisemitismo,’ 892. 53 Summary of policies towards the Waldensians in Geoffrey Symcox, ‘The Waldensians in the Absolutist State of Victor Amadeus II,’ in Albert de Lange (ed.), Dall’Europa alle Valli Valdesi: Atti del Convegno ‘Il Glorioso Rimpatrio 1689– 1989’ (Turin: Claudiana, 1990), 245ff. 54 Viora, Storia, 250–3; edict of expulsion, 1 July 1698, in Duboin, vol. 2, 262. 55 A. Forneron, ‘L’articolo segreto sul Pragelato nel trattato di alleanza colle Potenze Marittime,’ BSSV 70 (1938); Armand-Hugon, Storia, vol. 2, 207, 218– 22. 56 Viora, Storia, 257–60. 57 Mario Viora: ‘Note sulla questione dell’osservanza delle feste della Chiesa cattolica per parte dei Valdesi dopo il ristabilimento del 1690,’ in BSSV 52 (1928), 61ff; ‘Due interventi di Federico I di Svezia presso Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia in favore dei Valdesi,’ Archivio Storico Italiano, 7th ser., 12 (1929), 67ff; ‘Documenti sulle assistenze prestate dall’Olanda ai Valdesi durante il regno di Vittorio Amedeo II,’ BSBS 30 (1928), 295ff. 58 Mario Viora, Le Costituzioni piemontesi (1723, 1729, 1770): Storia interna della compilazione (Milan: Bocca, 1928), 45–7. 59 Viora, Storia, 262ff. The chief points of contention were the laws enforcing observance of Catholic feast days, requiring notaries to be of the Catholic faith, and limiting Protestant parents’ control over the inheritance rights of children who converted. 60 Viora, ibid., 284; cf. Franco Venturi, ‘Il Piemonte dei primi decenni del Settecento nelle relazioni dei diplomatici inglesi,’ BSBS 54 (1956), 247–60. 61 Edict, 20 June 1730, and explanatory Biglietto, 12 May 1731, in Duboin, vol. 2, 264–9. Analysis of its terms in Viora, Storia, 289ff. 62 Ibid., 296. 63 Cases of 1715, 1717, 1722, and 1723, in Segre, vol. 2, 1348, 1353, 1371, 1377. 64 Allegra, ‘L’antisemitismo,’ 867–75, enumerates incidents in 1707, 1714, 1721, 1722, and 1723; the most spectacular was the surreptitious baptism of Devora Moreno by her Christian nursemaid in 1713. 65 Ibid., 888ff. 66 Such incidents were not infrequent; for a representative case (the Salliens family in 1705), in which even the British ambassador’s intervention proved fruitless, see W. Blackley (ed.), The Diplomatic Correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Richard Hill, Envoy Extraordinary from the Court of St James to the Duke of Savoy, in the Reign of Queen Anne: from July 1703 to May 1706, 2 vols. (London: John

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68 69 70

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72 73

Geoffrey Symcox Murray, 1845), vol. 2, 547ff. For the details, see Geoffrey Symcox, ‘La vita religiosa,’ in Ricuperati (ed.), Storia di Torino, vol. 4, 841–67. Allegra, ‘L’antisemitismo,’ 892: ‘La causa ebraica che, anch’esso strumentalmente, aveva difeso per qualche anno fu dunque svenduta all chiesa, fu offerta come segnale di una disponibilità a trattare le controversie piú generali.’ Court opinions favourable to Jewish property ownership stopped, and the Condotta of 29 Jan. 1724 (Segre, vol. 2, 1399) contained an express ban on it. Foa, 101. Ibid., 85, estimates that the acquisition of Monferrato added a Jewish population of about 1,000 to the 2,000 or so then living in the original Savoyard territories. Ibid., 89. A summary description of the legal and administrative status of the Jews of Nice is in H. Moris, Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales antérieures à 1792: Alpes-Maritimes (Nice: Ventre Frères, 1902), xlviii–xlix. Allegra, ‘L’antisemitismo,’ 883. The process of ghettoization can be followed in Segre, vol. 2, 1386ff; vol. 3, 1401ff. But the process was never complete, for a number of rural Jewish communities were deemed too small to be ghettoized and continued to live as before.

two

Locke and the Problem of Toleration RICHARD ASHCRAFT1

In this essay, I want to consider John Locke and the problem of toleration from two interrelated perspectives. First, I will attempt to state what role I think the problem of toleration played in shaping Locke’s thought, and that of many of his contemporaries, in late seventeenth-century England. Here the focus will be on the arguments Locke employed in defence of religious toleration and the relationship between those arguments and Locke’s political thought viewed as a whole. Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) has been in print for more than three centuries, and it might be supposed that Locke’s position on the subject of toleration is so well known that there can be little point in discussing arguments with which we have become familiar. Yet, I suggest, the matter is not so straightforward as this and that what Locke has to say in his several letters on toleration2 has rarely been viewed in the context of his political thought3 as expressed in his other writings. One of the consequences of this interpretive approach to the Letter Concerning Toleration is that it has, in effect, historicized the problem of toleration to the extent that it is alleged that what Locke has to say concerning ‘the mutual toleration of Christians in their different professions of religion’ in the seventeenth century is no longer of relevance to individuals living in a secularized society in the twenty-first century.4 While I agree that Locke’s views on toleration must be understood in relation to the specific historical context within which they were formulated, this interpretive commitment, I shall argue, does not preclude the relevancy of some of his arguments to individuals living in any society in which the practice of toleration is a feature of social relations. This point leads to the second perspective I want to explore, which

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focuses on the importance of the problem of toleration to the development of liberal democratic political theory. As with the first point, I shall begin with a contextual argument, relating the problem of toleration to several currents of democratic ideas as they existed in seventeenth-century England. More ambitiously, I shall argue that certain foundational concepts that we employ in our activity of theorizing in the social sciences emerged from the attempt to understand the ways in which the problem of toleration shaped the thinking of Locke and his contemporaries. In an essay entitled ‘What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?,’ John Dunn argues not only that Locke’s personal commitment to Christianity5 renders the structure of his thought inaccessible to those who do not seek to understand it in terms of this commitment – a point with which I would agree – but also that the arguments employed by Locke in the Letter Concerning Toleration, for example, are so dependent on this commitment that they cannot really have any use or meaning for us. As Dunn puts it, there is a ‘yawning chasm between the implications of Locke’s arguments for tolerating varieties of Christian belief and practice within a Christian state and society and the implications which they would bear for freedom of thought and expression more broadly within a secular state or a more intractably plural religious culture.’6 It is this last point that I wish to challenge in this essay: that is, the rather peculiar idea that arguments are, as it were, frozen in historical time and cannot be resuscitated for use by later thinkers.7 This is not to deny, of course, the obvious proposition that meanings change over historical time and according to the differently constructed situations in which concepts and arguments are employed. It is rather doubtful that when Locke declared in the Second Treatise of Government that all men are naturally free, equal, and independent, he meant this statement as an attack on the institution of slavery then taking root in colonial America, or on the British slave trade, in which he himself was, for a brief period, a stockholder. Later thinkers nevertheless recognized the value of this Lockean argument to the cause of abolition, and later, by extension, to the enfranchisement of the working class. Locke’s argument, of course, was not the only one on which they relied in their efforts to secure the practical objectives of freedom and equality. Rather, it was incorporated into a theoretical framework that, viewed as a whole, expressed the needs and beliefs of individuals whom these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers were addressing.8 Even so, I am arguing, they were not mistaken in believing that they owed a debt to Locke, notwithstanding his distinctly different intentions, for having marked off the ground of battle

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and for having provided some of the weapons for carrying the fight forward. If we think simply in terms of self-contained philosophical systems or structures set afloat in the stream of history, then we might take this example as a classic instance of misinterpretation, a misreading of what Locke had to say. But if we think in terms of how beliefs are embedded in social practices – and our conception of social reality indicates that a social practice, such as toleration, is supported by a complicated network of beliefs not reducible to a single philosophical system – then, from the standpoint of how to defend or to extend the practice of toleration, committing an interpretive philosophical mistake ceases to be the overriding, or the only, issue to be considered.9 What is crucial is the mobilization of arguments that, building on the acceptance of already existing practices or institutions, will support the specific practical objectives we seek to realize through collective action. In short, our goal is not to reproduce with historical accuracy the intent of Locke’s arguments but to extend the meaning of those arguments as part of the process of providing a justification for the activities in which we are engaged. If some interpreters of the Letter Concerning Toleration wish to exclude Locke’s arguments from our debate concerning toleration on the grounds of their historical irrelevancy, other scholars have sought to exclude them because, in purely philosophical terms, they are judged to be bad arguments. This view has been recently advanced by Jeremy Waldron in what has been described as ‘the most influential critique of the argument of the Letter written by a contemporary philosopher.’10 Briefly, Waldron’s point is that Locke directs his attention towards demonstrating the irrationality of religious persecution rather than indicating why, from a moral standpoint, such an action is wrong. Hence, it is argued, Locke pays more attention to the inefficacy of coerced belief than he does to the violations of the rights of those individuals against whom the coercion is applied. Moreover, Waldron argues, Locke is wrong on the factual point, for beliefs can be coerced, and it was, therefore, a fatal error on Locke’s part to rest so much of his argument in the Letter on this empirical assertion. Because any contemporary debate regarding toleration would have a philosophical interest in defending the rights of those to be tolerated, there is, Waldron concludes, virtually nothing to be learned from Locke’s arguments in the Letter Concerning Toleration. In addition to these general dismissals of Locke’s argument, some specific critiques of Locke’s position have been advanced that are designed to call into question his status as a founder of the tradition of liberal political thought. It has been asserted, for example, that, unlike John Stuart

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Mill, Locke has no commitment to diversity of opinion as a positive feature of society. It has been charged that, in the Letter, he never even defends the right of the individual to worship in public. And, finally, it is alleged that Locke did not commit himself to the principles of free speech and free press as concomitant features of the freedom he was defending in that work.11 In formulating a reply to these criticisms, I will begin with a discussion of the alleged specific defects in Locke’s argument. Once these misreadings of Locke’s position have been challenged, the question of whether Locke’s general strategy with respect to toleration has been adequately appreciated by modern interpreters of the Letter Concerning Toleration can be addressed. While I naturally take the four letters on toleration as the primary text(s) for my elucidation of Locke’s perspective, I have also stressed the importance of a larger intellectual context for understanding the arguments that Locke makes in those works. During the decade between 1680 and 1690, Locke was engaged in writing the Two Treatises of Government, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and a substantial but unpublished manuscript on toleration, as well as, of course, the first Letter on Toleration. Although it would be simplistic to suppose that every argument in these works can be fitted into a logically consistent system of thought, it would also be absurd, methodologically speaking, to assume that Locke’s fundamental assumptions, concepts, and arguments can be neatly compartmentalized into wholly separable works. In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, the most plausible assumption is that Locke believed the arguments in the works he was writing simultaneously were compatible, overlapping, and convergent with respect to the realization of his objectives. Toleration, it is said, only arises in situations where there is a diversity and conflict of viewpoints that are disliked or disapproved of by the person who must tolerate them. Since Locke did not see any positive virtue in the diversity of religious beliefs, it is argued, he provided only what may be described as a pragmatic rather than a principled defence of toleration. Both the general assertion and its application to Locke are, in my view, mistaken. The issue with respect to diversity does not lie wholly in the plane of subjective preferences; rather, some assessment of the causes of diversity and, in particular, its ontological status, needs to be taken into account. Whether people enjoy or dislike their work, for example, for the vast majority of them the activity of labouring in some fashion is an ontological feature of life, to be accepted as a reality. And, from the standpoint of the existence of society as a whole, certainly, it is not imaginable to

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think of a society in which the vast majority of its members are not engaged in work in some form. Hence, what is necessary is not that most people like the activity of labouring, but that they accept work as a necessary feature of their social existence.12 The same can be said of the diversity of opinions, and in fact, this was Locke’s position: whether he was examining the human condition from the viewpoint of ontology or applying his sociological realism to the task of explaining the origins of political society, Locke accepted that conflict and diversity are inescapable elements of human existence. In the Second Treatise of Government, he refers to ‘the variety of Opinions and contrariety of Interests, which unavoidably happen in all Collections of men.’13 Similarly, in the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke argues that ‘it is not the diversity of opinions, which cannot be avoided’ that is the problem; rather, he maintains, it is ‘the refusal of toleration to those that are of different opinions’ that has produced a history of religious wars and conflict.14 Locke argues that given ‘the variety and contradiction of opinions in religion’ in the world, it is unreasonable to suppose that individuals will ‘quit the light of their own reason ... oppose the dictates of their own consciences, and blindly ... resign ... themselves to the will of their governors.’15 Moreover, since these divisions of opinion exist among the clergy, even within the established church, Locke declares that ‘their very dissension unavoidably puts us upon a necessity of deliberating, and consequently allows a liberty of choosing that, which upon consideration we prefer.’16 In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke stresses the diversity of tastes and opinions among mankind as an empirical characteristic of human existence. And, taking this diversity and conflict as a given, he again incorporates it into an argument for toleration. It would ‘become all men to maintain Peace and the common Offices of Humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions,’ Locke advises, ‘since we cannot reasonably expect, that any one should readily and obsequiously quit his own Opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an Authority, which the Understanding of Man acknowledges not.’17 In short, a realistic acceptance of diversity and conflict is, for Locke, a precondition for a tolerant attitude and a foundational assumption in his defence of the freedom of individuals to make rational choices.18 Locke is so well known as a natural rights theorist that it is difficult to understand why it should be supposed by interpreters of the Letter Concerning Toleration that he refuses to conceive of the right to worship freely in public as a natural right. It is true that Locke’s general strategy in the Letter is to pursue an argument in which the main focus is not on individ-

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ual rights, although, as we shall see, it is intended to be a defence of those rights; but that is another matter, to which I will return in a moment. As to the specific assertion, Locke says plainly in the Letter that the teaching he endorses is that ‘liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right.’19 Moreover, Locke insists that liberty of conscience is one of those ‘natural rights,’ the violation of which legitimizes a resort to force by those affected.20 In the Third Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke repeats the point, arguing that the fact that ‘every man has a right to toleration’ is traceable to the ‘natural liberty’ individuals possessed as inhabitants of the state of nature prior to the establishment of the commonwealth.21 From the time of his first defence of toleration in the 1667 Essay on Toleration, Locke maintained that an individual’s religious beliefs were entitled to ‘an absolute and universal right to toleration.’22 In the 1681 manuscript on toleration, Locke’s fundamental premise is that it is ‘part of my liberty as a Christian and as a man to choose of what church or religious society I will be of, as most conducing to the salvation of my soul, of which I alone am judge, and over which the magistrate has no power at all.’23 Thus, Locke concludes, individuals have a ‘natural and evangelical right of taking care of their own salvation.’24 This right, Locke argues, ‘cannot be disposed of by the majority of a House of Commons, who, with all their representative power cannot by a vote make anyone believe the doctrines of infallibility or transubstantiation’25 or decide for him of what church he should be a member. As to Locke’s alleged preoccupation with the pragmatic difficulties of persecution rather than its moral bankruptcy, this, too, seems to reflect a rather careless reading of the text. It is true that Locke believes persecution to be irrational, but, as we might suspect from a natural law theorist who describes the Law of Nature as ‘the law of reason,’ it is hardly possible to extract the moral component from Locke’s use of the term ‘rational.’ The magistrate’s authority, Locke maintains in the Second Letter, is established according to ‘the bounds of right and wrong,’26 by which he means, as he subsequently says, the Law of Nature. In punishing individuals for their religious beliefs, Locke insists, ‘the magistrate misapplies the force he has in his hands, and so goes beyond right, beyond the limits of his power.’27 This, Locke declares in the Third Letter, is an act of ‘injustice.’28 Locke has no doubt that persecution is a violation of natural law and, from that perspective, both irrational and unjust.29 But this is only part of his argument. Locke also wants to portray the use of force against individuals who are rational as well as innocent of any crime as an irrational action, in the

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sense of exhibiting a misunderstanding of what it means to be a rational person. The general proposition underlying Locke’s argument is perhaps best expressed in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. ‘Every man,’ Locke writes, ‘must some time or other be trusted to himself, and his own conduct.’30 In the Second Treatise, Locke assumes that ‘God having given Man an Understanding to direct his Actions, has allowed him a freedom of Will, and liberty of Acting’ within the boundaries of the Law of Nature.31 Thus ‘the freedom then of man and liberty of acting according to his own will,’ Locke argues, ‘is grounded on his having Reason, which is able to instruct him in that Law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will.’32 Not only does the use of force against individuals violate these conditions of assumed rationality, and therefore, the moral autonomy of individuals, but also, Locke argues, it is implausible to suppose that individuals in the state of nature would rationally choose to subject themselves to religious persecution as a condition of membership in civil society. As Locke frames the argument in the Third Letter, force ‘being an injury which in the state of nature every one would avoid; protection from such injury is one of the ends of a commonwealth.’33 Hence, Locke concludes, ‘the punishing of any opinion in religion ... by the force given the magistrate, could not be intended by those who constituted or entered into the commonwealth.’34 Rational action, in Locke’s view, involves freedom of choice, deliberation, consent, argument, and persuasion. The employment of force violates these conditions of rationality. It supposes that rational disagreement concerning matters of religious worship constitutes a crime or an irrational action punishable by force, but that assumption, Locke insists, is not supported by the Scriptures, the precepts of the Law of Nature, or the intentions of the rational individuals who consented to the social contract establishing the limits of the magistrate’s power. At this point, we are in a position to address the general question of why Locke formulated his argument in the Letter Concerning Toleration the way he did. We have seen that Locke believed that individuals do have a natural right to freedom of religious worship but that he did not choose to make that rights claim the central point of his argument.35 Instead of adopting what would, in the nature of things, have been a defensive posture, Locke chose to go on the offensive: that is, he challenged directly the premise of his opponents’ position, namely, the claim for authority to employ force with respect to matters of religious worship. Locke’s argument, to put it simply, is not a defence of rights; it is a challenge to authority. What he proposes to demonstrate in the Letter Concerning Toleration is

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that the claim for authority to use force to persecute individuals for their religious beliefs is not defensible on any ground. This is because no such authority exists, and not merely because the wrong person, that is, the civil magistrate, is claiming that authority. Locke repeatedly insists in the Letter that ‘the care ... of every man’s soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself.’36 Since ‘one man does not violate the right of another by his erroneous opinions, and undue manner of worship,’37 the ‘care of each man’s soul ... neither does belong to the commonwealth, nor can be subjected to it, [and] is left entirely to every man’s self.’38 Locke states his general argument in support of this assertion at the beginning of the Letter. God, he maintains, has not given ‘any such authority to one man over another, as to compel anyone to his religion.’39 Nor, he adds, ‘can any such power be vested in the magistrate by the consent of the people; because no man can so far abandon the care of his own salvation, as blindly to leave it to the choice of any other, whether prince or subject, to prescribe to him what faith or worship he shall embrace.’40 In the absence of a specific grant of authority from God and the presence of an obligation laid on the individual to care for his own soul, which he cannot renounce through consent or delegation, there are simply no grounds for a valid claim to authority or for the exercise of power with respect to religious beliefs. Not only has Locke put his opponents on the defensive, challenging them to produce a justification for authority which he denies exists, but also, it is obvious that without such a justification, the natural right of individuals to worship freely is preserved. Although there are many interesting aspects of this way of formulating the argument, I want to focus on two features that I believe are linked to Locke’s political radicalism. First, it will be noticed that Locke’s position in the Letter Concerning Toleration expresses a radical anticlericalism: that is, he asserts that clergymen have no authority whatsoever with respect to religious matters, which differentiates them from other individuals who, as an act of charity, may express their concern for another’s salvation through advice or persuasion.41 But Locke is quite clear that ‘those things that every man ought sincerely to inquire into himself, and by meditation, study, search, and his own endeavors, attain the knowledge of, cannot be looked upon as the peculiar profession of any one sort of men.’42 While Locke’s discussion in the Letter centres on the magistrate’s use of force – because he is the only authority that can legitimately employ force for any purpose – Locke has no doubt that the real force driving religious persecution is the clergy. The latter are the ‘men striving for power and

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empire over one another.’43 When ‘zeal for the church [is] joined with the desire of dominion,’ Locke observes, ‘how easily the pretence of religion, and of the care of souls, serves for a cloak to covetousness, rapine and ambition.’44 In short, ‘these incendiaries, and disturbers of the public peace ... by flattering the ambition, and favouring the dominion of princes and men in authority, they endeavour with all their might to promote that tyranny in the commonwealth which otherwise they should not be able to establish in the church.’45 Mention of ‘tyranny’ leads to the second point, for Locke’s definition of that term in the Two Treatises and in his other writings is the exercise of ‘force without authority.’ Thus, whoever ‘exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject ... [is] acting without authority, [and] may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.’46 This argument from the Second Treatise is also employed by Locke in the Letter Concerning Toleration.47 Not only does religious persecution fall within Locke’s definition of tyranny that may be forcefully resisted by the people, but Locke also repeats the general argument he had made in the Second Treatise, that it is the ruler’s oppressive actions, not the seditious desires of the people, that are the cause of revolutions. Shifting perspective from an attempt to understand Locke’s argument as he formulated it, I want to place that argument in the context of other discussions of the problem of toleration, anticlericalism, and democratic ideas in the seventeenth century. Specifically, I will briefly consider the Levellers’ response to these issues in order to indicate the similarities between their arguments and the ones advanced by Locke. Then I will provide an illustration of how Locke’s arguments were carried forward by one of the leading eighteenth-century Deists. I want to briefly discuss a few of the ideas and arguments advanced by the Levellers.48 For, I shall argue, they provide a theoretical framework for conceiving of toleration as a positive value through their idea of anticlericalism, which in both its political and its religious dimensions is very close to the one developed in Locke’s writings. In the secondary literature the Levellers have generally been characterized as the first secular political movement or party of modern society. Recent scholarship has exposed the inadequacy of this portrayal by demonstrating the importance of the religious beliefs of Baptists, Independents, and other sectarians in shaping Leveller political thought.49 Indeed the latter, it is argued, must be understood in terms of the Levellers’ commitment to ‘practical

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Christianity’ as an inextricable mixture of religious and social duties.50 According to the Levellers, ‘the meanest capacity is full capable of a right understanding’ of the essential tenets of Christianity.53 This proposition provided the foundation for a fierce attack on clerical authority. Not only do the clergy ‘darken the clear meaning’ of the Bible with ‘their forced and artificial glosses’ on its passages, but, William Walwyn argued, they purposely make the Scriptures appear to be difficult to understand in order to justify their own status and wealth in society.52 The clergy’s ‘pulpit-pratling,’ others insisted, has nothing to do with true religion. The clergy are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing who deserved to be exposed as deceivers of the people.53 But if ‘the meanest commoner’ could understand the fundamentals of religion and hence meet his or her obligations with respect to the most important objective – personal salvation – there was no reason the same standard could not be applied to the law or to political duties. ‘The Levellers claimed that just as the clergy made religion difficult and uncertain in order to monopolize it and to dominate and exploit the people, so the lawyers made the law complex and confusing’ in order to sustain their power and wealth.54 Since the laws of society and the basic principles of politics were based upon and, the Levellers believed, ultimately reducible to ‘the essence of Christianity,’ political authority ought to be premised on individual judgment.55 But while reliance on individual judgment undermined political and religious claims to hierarchical authority, it did not lead, as many commentators on the Levellers have erroneously maintained, to either an atomistic or a possessive individualism.56 ‘It is the command of God,’ Major Wildman declared, ‘that every man should seek the good of his neighbour.’ Or, as Richard Overton put it, ‘I was not born for my self alone, but for my neighbor as well, and I am resolved to discharge the trust which God hath reposed in me for the good of others.’ It is this sense of personal responsibility to act to promote the good of others – a sense of community – that ‘authorized’ private individuals to engage in collective social action.57 This authority was in turn grounded on the precepts of natural law viewed as a codification of practical Christianity. In a joint statement, John Lilburne, William Walwyn, and Richard Overton wrote that what they cared about was not ‘the formal and ceremonial’ but rather ‘the practical and most real part of religion,’ that is, those actions that a true Christian was expected to perform.58 Hence the Levellers drew no distinctions between feeding the hungry, or supporting the poor, and relieving the oppressed, or opposing tyr-

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anny. ‘I esteem it a high part of true religion,’ Walwyn declared, ‘to promote common justice.’ Lilburne and other Levellers echoed the point that freeing society ‘from all tyrants, oppressors and deceivers’ was just as much part of practical Christianity as the ‘brotherly charity’ that God had commanded them to show to others.59 In other words, true Christianity, as the Levellers understood it, authorized not only individual acts of charity but also collective action against political oppression. From the perspective that emphasizes the importance of religious beliefs to the Levellers, it is possible to understand why they espoused an individualism rooted in divine intentions and communal obligations, why they did not view political activity as a secular realm of social life, and why the demand for religious liberty – toleration – was central to the Leveller program.60 Too little attention has been paid to this last point in the secondary literature on the Levellers in favour of an overemphasis on their claim for manhood suffrage. But if, as Colonel Rainborough argued, ‘the poorest he’ had a moral right to participate in political decisions, it was because that individual was presumed to have the capacity to understand and perform his moral duties as set forth in the Scriptures and in natural law. This presumption led even more directly to a defence of religious toleration, since reliance on individual judgment necessarily defined a church as a voluntary society based on the consent of its members, thus placing all churches on an equal plane of authority. Included within the commitment to religious toleration was a defence of a free press, free speech, and free assembly as rights necessary to realize the objective of religious freedom. In addition, however, ‘liberty of discourse’ was defended by the Levellers as an independent contribution to the welfare of society because it was the means ‘by which corruption and tyranny would soon be discovered,’ whether they occurred in the church or in the state. Thus freedom of the press, Lilburne wrote, was the means ‘whereby all treacherous and tyrannical designs may be the easier discovered, and so prevented.’61 It is worth repeating and emphasizing the point that, while these democratic practices – free speech, free press, free assembly, extension of the franchise, and religious freedom – can be spoken of as natural rights, they are so for the Levellers only in the context of the assumption that they constitute the means whereby individuals are able to meet their communal obligations as set forth by God. Like the Levellers, Locke argues that the fundamental duties of Christianity are capable of being understood by everyone, and the exercise of this capacity with respect to religion is, in itself, sufficient to designate

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human beings as ‘rational creatures.’62 Locke’s reasoning underlying this conclusion likewise develops the Levellers’ argument that the essence of Christianity can be simplified to a few basic beliefs – the theme of The Reasonableness of Christianity – accessible to all, including the poor and the illiterate. Locke refuses to accept that ‘the greatest part of mankind [are] by the necessity of their condition, subjected to unavoidable ignorance in those things which are of greatest importance to them.’ ‘No man,’ he insists, ‘is so wholly taken up with the attendance on the means of living, as to have no spare time at all to think of his soul, and inform himself in matters of religion.’63 ‘I can see no reason,’ Locke writes, why anyone should conclude ‘that the meaner sort of people must give themselves up to brutish stupidity in the things of their nearest concernment,’ when it is obvious to him that there are sufficient examples of ‘very mean people, who have raised their minds to a great sense and understanding of religion.’64 Not only is it the case, as Locke puts it in The Reasonableness of Christianity, that every person must decide for himself what the fundamental tenets of Christianity are, but it follows from this, as Locke declares in the Letter Concerning Toleration, that ‘those things that every man ought sincerely to inquire into himself, and by meditation, study, search, and his own endeavors, attain the knowledge of, cannot be looked upon as the peculiar profession of any one sort of men.’65 Reasoning about the Scriptures, Locke notes, is interpreted by his critics as ‘want of due respect and deference to the authority’ of the clergy as ‘spiritual guides.’66 But the fact is, Locke argues, people are ‘hoodwinked’ by the clergy and ‘a veil is cast over their eyes.’67 ‘The heads and leaders of the church, moved by avarice and insatiable desire of dominion,’ Locke declared in the Letter, have ‘misused their power to promote persecution and tyranny.’68 In the 1681 manuscript on toleration Locke stated as a general maxim that ‘churchmen of all sects with power are very apt to persecute and misuse’ that power against those who disagree with them.69 If it is the case, as Locke insists, that ‘no man ... has a right to prescribe to me my faith, or ... to impose his interpretations or opinions on me,’ then the clergy, as a distinct group, is without ‘authority.’70 Neither Locke nor the Levellers denied that the Law of Nature obliged everyone to assist his neighbour. In the case of religion, this could be done through advice and persuasion, but whatever the chosen method, providing assistance was a universal obligation laid on all individuals without distinction.71 Moreover, as Locke elaborates, my ‘persuasion of truth’ or ‘my orthodoxy gives me no more authority over

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[another], than his (for everyone is orthodox to himself) gives him over me.’72 In short, The Reasonableness of Christianity is a relentless critique of the clergy, philosophers, and any other social group that arrogates to itself the authority to instruct mankind in religious matters for and about which it has neither the authority nor the knowledge.73 Similarly, as we have seen earlier in this essay,74 in the Letter Concerning Toleration Locke challenges his opponents to produce a warrant of authority for the exercise of force with respect to matters of religion. He argues that the care of each man’s soul and salvation is his alone, and cannot be relinquished to a magistrate, even if an individual should want to do that. Given this situation, Locke believes, no grounds exist for a valid claim to an authority for an exercise of force in matters of religious persuasion.75 Locke goes on, as we have also seen, to unmask the true motives and purposes underlying the clergy’s attempt to claim authority: they are not religious in nature, but political, because the clergy really wants power. Thus they flatter princes and secular authorities, and help to promote tyranny in the commonwealth, in a way that they cannot in the church. Much more, of course, could be said regarding the congruence of the Levellers’ and Locke’s views, but I want to place the discussion of toleration and anticlericalism in the context of a tradition of discourse employing the notions of natural right, popular sovereignty, consent, and a defence of democratic practices that extends into the eighteenth century. These ideas were developed by Matthew Tindal, who was much influenced by Locke’s writings. In An Essay Concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion (1697), Tindal begins with an acknowledgment that the subject has been virtually exhausted by the author of those ‘three incomparable Letters Concerning Toleration.’76 Yet this does not prevent him from restating Locke’s argument – sometimes word for word without quotation marks. Since everyone is equal in the state of nature under the Law of Nature, the individual, Tindal writes, has a ‘sovereign right of judging’ in matters relating to religion. Freedom of conscience is, as Locke claimed, a natural right.77 Like Locke, Tindal insists that Christianity can be understood by ‘the simple and ignorant, the bulk of mankind,’ and, he argues, it is ‘the pride, ambition, and covetousness’ of the clergy, and their instigation of the magistrate to employ force against dissidents that ‘has been the cause’ of all mischief and disorder in Christian societies.78 The clergy have attempted to make Christianity appear mysterious simply in order to preserve their authority over the laity.79 The clergy engage in preaching ‘as a trade’ to

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make a living, not as individuals in search of truth. Moreover, Tindal argues, their compliance with the political whims of the magistrate makes them unreliable as guides with respect to any of the important questions of life.80 In The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, Tindal begins with an unattributed citation from Locke, placing individuals in a state of nature and equality, where individuals possess the right to defend their natural rights, including liberty of conscience, by recourse to arms against anyone – clergy or magistrate – who exercises force against them.81 Like Locke and the Levellers, Tindal recognizes no distinction between ‘ecclesiastical tyranny’ and any other form of oppression. In a statement that could have come from Lilburne or Overton, Tindal maintains that individuals ‘are obliged by the common ties of humanity to assist one another in opposing tyrants,’ wherever they appear.82 Tindal focuses on the clergy’s power, which he characterizes as ‘the most absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, uncontrollable power in the world,’ a power, he asserts, that is without foundation.83 Thus, he concludes, there is in society ‘no room for the independent power of any set of priests.’84 Like Locke, Tindal’s conception of the simplicity of Christianity, the equality of individuals, the church as a voluntary society founded on individual consent, and his reading of the history of Christianity leads him to deny a purposive social role to a distinct group of individuals. In effect we are all in a state of nature with respect to religion and politics, an argument certainly present in Locke’s writings, but the concept of the state of nature is effectively made use of and emphasized by Tindal as the starting point for any discussion of religious authority. What Locke claimed as the individual’s ‘supreme and absolute authority of judging for himself’ in matters of religion, Tindal characterizes as ‘the Protestant principle’ or the essence of Protestantism.85 Thus, following a reference to Locke, Tindal describes his position as a defence of ‘Protestantism, the essence of which consists in everyone’s having an impartial right to judge for himself, and which is the necessary consequence of it, acting according to that judgment.’86 By which Tindal means, as did Locke and the Levellers, the right to engage in collective action in defence of this right, as he makes clear in The Rights of the Christian Church.87 Finally, like the Levellers and the Dissenters of the Restoration, Tindal argues that freedom of the press is inextricably linked to religious toleration.88 But he also offers a more general defence, maintaining that ‘the more important any controversy is, the more reason there is for liberty of

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the press.’89 Moreover a free press is a weapon against tyranny, whether political or ecclesiastical.90 And, as with individual judgment, Tindal makes a free press part of the essence of Protestantism. He asserts that ‘the Reformation is wholly owing to the press’ and the discovery of printing.91 Indeed, he argues, ‘the discovery of printing seems to have been designed by Providence to free men from the tyranny of the clergy,’ and he means both Catholic and Protestant clergy.92 From this perspective what is only implied or hinted at in the writings of the Levellers is clearly and forcefully stated by Tindal, namely, that all the natural rights of the individual are theoretically defensible in terms of the essence of Protestantism, and historically these rights have become social practices within (seventeenth-century) society only as a consequence of the ideas of toleration and anticlericalism, and the concomitant redefinition of authority.

Notes 1 The untimely death of Professor Richard Ashcraft prevented his participation in the process of preparing this volume. This fact is reflected in the basic structure of this essay. Professor Wolfenstein, the executor of his papers, kindly located the first section of the essay and sent it to us shortly after Professor Ashcraft’s death. The essay was clearly incomplete, but the second and concluding section, which covered the material on the Levellers and Tindal, could never be located. The editors of this volume accordingly elected to search Professor Ashcraft’s published papers for the missing material. We have included that material as the second section of this essay. We are grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission to include this material in the present volume. Given this odyssey, we have elected not to alter the text of this essay, except at points where punctuation and other technical formatting needed to be made consistent with our house style. 2 Professor Ashcraft’s original text reads: ‘in the four letters on toleration.’ 3 Original text: ‘context of Locke’s political thought.’ 4 John Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration,’ in The Works of John Locke, 12th ed. (London: Printed for C. and J. Rivington et al., 1824), 5: 5. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Locke’s works (hereafter Works) are taken from this edition. References will cite only the specific title of the work and the volume and page numbers. 5 Original text: ‘In an essay entitled “What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?,” John Dunn argues that Locke’s personal commitment to Christianity not only renders the structure of his thought

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Richard Ashcraft inaccessible to those who do not seek to understand it in terms of this commitment – a point with which I would agree – but also, Dunn claims, the arguments employed by Locke in the Letter Concerning Toleration, for example, are so dependent upon this commitment that they cannot really have any use or meaning for us.’ John Dunn, ‘What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?’ in Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1991 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 19. Original text: ‘It is this last point that I wish to challenge in this paper [essay]. That is, the rather peculiar idea that arguments are, as it were, frozen in historical time and cannot be resuscitated for use by later thinkers.’ Original text: ‘beliefs of individuals who these eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury thinkers were addressing.’ Original text: ‘But if we think in terms of how beliefs are embedded in social practices, and our conception of social reality indicates that a social practice, such as toleration, is supported by a complicated network of beliefs – not reducible to a single philosophical system – then, from the standpoint of how to defend or to extend the practice of toleration, committing an interpretive philosophical mistake ceases to be the overriding, or the only, issue to be considered.’ Jeremy Waldron, ‘Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,’ in Susan Mendus (ed.), Justifying Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61–86. Original text: ‘And, finally, it is alleged that Locke did not commit himself to the principle of free speech or a free press as concomitant features of the freedom he was defending in that work.’ Original text: ‘Hence, what is necessary is neither that most people like or dislike the activity of laboring, but simply that they accept work as a necessary feature of their social existence.’ John Locke, ‘Second Treatise,’ in Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Peter Laslett, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), §98. Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration,’ 5: 53. Ibid., 5: 12. Ibid., 5: 15. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 659–60. Editor’s note: Citation information for nn 11–16 has been added by the editors. The original text contains all the quotations here shown but only a reference (4: 16, 4) after the material immediately preceding n 16. Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration,’ 5: 47–8.

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20 See ibid., 5: 53. Original text: ‘Locke insists that liberty of conscience is one of those “natural rights” that in the face of its violation individuals generally “think it lawful for them to resist force with force” in its defence (ibid.).’ 21 John Locke, ‘A Third Letter for Toleration,’ in Works, 5: 212. 22 John Locke, ‘An Essay Concerning Toleration,’ in Henry Richard Fox Boume, The Life of John Locke (London: H.S. King, 1876; reprint, Aachen, Germany: Scientia Verlag, 1969), 1: 176. 23 Ms. C34, Locke (Bodleian Library, Oxford). 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 John Locke, ‘A Second Letter Concerning Toleration,’ in Works, 5: 133. 27 Ibid., 5: 135. 28 Locke, ‘A Third Letter for Toleration,’ 5: 212. 29 Original text: ‘Locke has no doubt that persecution is a violation of natural law and in that sense, it is both irrational and unjust.’ 30 John Locke, ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education,’ in James L. Axtell (ed.), The Educational Writings of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), §42. 31 Locke, ‘Second Treatise,’ §58. See the complete texts of §58–§61. 32 Ibid., §63. 33 Locke, ‘A Third Letter for Toleration,’ 5: 212. 34 Ibid. 35 Original text: ‘We have seen that Locke believed that individuals do have a natural right to freedom of religious worship, but he did not choose to make that rights claim the central point of his argument.’ 36 Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration,’ 5: 23. 37 Ibid., 5: 41. 38 Ibid., 5: 43–4. 39 Ibid., 5: 10. 40 Ibid., 5: 10–11 41 Editor’s note: ‘Clergymen’ has been substituted for the original ‘clergy.’ 42 Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration,’ 5: 25. 43 Ibid., 5: 5. 44 Ibid., 5: 36. 45 Ibid., 5: 54. 46 Locke, ‘Second Treatise,’ §202. 47 Editor’s note: ‘also’ added to the original for emphasis. 48 Although the manuscript sent to us by Professor Ashcraft’s executor ended here, the talk that Professor Ashcraft gave at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library had indeed continued with a discussion of the Levellers

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50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

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Richard Ashcraft and of Matthew Tindal, the aforementioned ‘leading eighteenth-century deist.’ The editors wish to thank Tamara Zwick for her work in locating the missing material in a paper published by Professor Ashcraft. Again, we are grateful to Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce portions of this text. Richard Ashcraft, ‘Anticlericalism and Authority in Lockean Political Thought,’ in Roger Lund (ed.), The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox writing and cultural response 1660–1750 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), 73–96. Brian Manning, ‘The Levellers and Religion,’ in J.F. McGregor and B. Reay (eds.), Radical Religion in the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 65–90; J.-C. Davis, ‘The Levellers and Christianity,’ in Brian Manning (ed.), Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London, 1973), 224–50; Brian Manning, ‘Puritanism and Democracy, 1640–1642,’ in Donald Pennington and Keith Thomas (eds.), Puritans and Revolutionaries: Essays in Seventeenth-Century History Presented to Christopher Hill (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1978), 139–60; James Fulton Maclear, ‘Popular Anticlericalism in the Puritan Revolution,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 17(4) (1956), 443– 70; Lotte Mulligan, ‘The Religious Roots of William Walwyn’s Radicalism,’ Journal of Religious History 12(2) (1982), 162–79. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 73; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 168–70, 175. Ibid., 65; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 167. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 66, 84; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 169, 171. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 75. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 68; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 169, 174. C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 70–1; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 168–70, 178. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 69; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 170, 179. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 71–3; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 169–70, 173, 177. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 78–82; Mulligan, ‘Religious Roots,’ 163, 173, 175; F.D. Dow, Radicalism in the English Revolution, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35, 46. Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 82–3. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.20.6; Locke, Works, 6: 147. Editor’s note: in place of ‘human beings,’ the original text has ‘them.’

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63 Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV.20.3; Journal, 20 March 1678I; MS fol. 3. 64 Locke, Works, 2: 342–3. For a more extended discussion of the social implications of this argument and a critique of Macpherson’s interpretation of The Reasonableness of Christianty, see Richard Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (London and Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 248–59. 65 Locke, Works, 6: 233; 5: 25. The right a man has with respect to the care of his soul ‘is not annexed to his way of education, or acquisition in letters.’ Locke MS C34, fols. 48–9. 66 Locke, Works, 6: 294. 67 Ibid., 6: 297; 5: 26. 68 Ibid., 5: 23, 53–4; 6: 290–2. 69 Locke MS C34, fol. II. 70 Locke, Works, 6: 359; ‘Toleration’ (1679), Locke MS d.I, fol. 125. ‘I affirm that it is out of the power of any man to make another a representative for himself in matters of religion, much less can another make one for him, since nobody can give another man authority to determine in what way he should worship God Almighty.’ Locke MS C34, fol. 122. 71 Original text: ‘Neither Locke nor the Levellers denied that the Law of Nature obliged everyone to assist his neighbor, and in the case of religion, this could be done through advice and persuasion, but this was a universal obligation laid upon all individuals without distinction.’ 72 Locke, Works, 6: 327. 73 Original text: ‘In short, The Reasonableness of Christianity is a relentless critique of the clergy, philosophers, and any other social group that arrogates to itself the authority to instruct mankind in religious matters for which it has neither the authority nor the knowledge to do so.’ 74 The material in this paragraph has been added by the editors of the tolerance volume as a transition. 75 Locke, Works, 5: 126, 153, 2 I 3 495, 562, 565. Locke makes the same argument in the 1681 manuscript on toleration, maintaining that either God appointed the officers of the early Christian church, in which case, clerical authority is ‘unalterable’ and ‘settled,’ or else, authority lies wholly in the body of the church, as the like power is in other societies to constitute their officers with such powers as they think fit.’ Locke MS C34, fol. 18; cf. fols. 71, 127–8). 76 Matthew Tindal, An Essay Concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion (London: n.p., 1697), 2; cf. 113. 77 Ibid., 19–20, 24, 117–18; Locke, Works, 5: 41, 47–8. 78 Tindal, Power of the Magistrate, 106–11, 141–2. 79 Ibid., 112, 115.

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80 Ibid., 136, 139–40. 81 Matthew Tindal, The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, 3rd ed. (London: n.p., 1707), 2–3, 17, 19. 82 Ibid., 26–7. 83 Ibid., 32–3, 80. 84 Ibid., 81. This position was also taken by Walter Moyle in an Essay on the Roman Government, a manuscript copy which Locke owned. J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, 188. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 85 Locke, Works, 5: 44; Matthew Tindal, A Defence of the Rights of the Christian Church (London: n.p., 1707), 6. 86 Tindal, Power of the Magistrate, 113, 117–18. 87 Tindal, Rights, 17, 19, 26–7. 88 Matthew Tindal, A Discourse for the Liberty of the Press in a Letter to a Member of Parliament (London: 1698; rptd. in Four Discourses, London: 1709), 293–300, 313; and Power of the Magistrate, 122, 184. Edmund Hickeringill, e.g., who began as a Baptist chaplain in Robert Lilburne’s regiment and later became a radical Whig and a deist, also drew this connection (Emerson, ‘Heresy,’ 396– 7; Manning, ‘Levellers and Religion,’ 82–3). See Roger L. Emerson ‘Heresy, English Deism and the Social Order,’ Church History 37 (Dec. 1968), 389–403, 399–400. 89 Tindal, Liberty of the Press, 307. 90 Ibid., 320. 91 Ibid., 303. 92 Ibid., 316.

three

Political Parties and the Legitimacy of Opposition TERENCE BALL

It might seem odd, at first sight, to attempt to link the concept of ‘party’ to the growth of tolerance in Western societies. When today we think of political parties we are apt to associate them with difference and division, with partisan wrangling, with conflict more often petty than principled. And who can deny that this picture, like any good caricature, contains more than a grain of truth? But, however accurate, the caricature conceals another, and perhaps more significant, truth: the idea and the institution of the modern political party is a moral and intellectual achievement of no small importance, a long time in the making, and the result of a series of protracted and hard-fought political and conceptual disputes. It is tied closely and necessarily to the legitimation of political opposition, which required an attitude of toleration towards conflicting political perspectives and the claim that honourable men may differ in their political views without ceasing to be civil and coming to blows. Indeed, the modern concept of political party is intimately related to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments out of which our modern concept of toleration emerged. The sheer ordinariness and ubiquity of the political party as an institution in the modern world doubtless helps to obscure the magnitude and importance of these developments. Whatever the cause, the history of the idea of ‘party’ has largely been ignored by historians of ideas. As J.A.W. Gunn observes, ‘liberty, justice and equality – not to mention representation, the majority, and the separation of powers – all have their intellectual histories; but party seems to be an institution singularly bereft of intellectual parentage.’1 To trace this neglected ancestry would be to tell an important and heretofore largely missing part of the story of the

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growth of political pluralism and toleration in the West.2 A comprehensive history of ‘party’ being well beyond the bounds of the present essay, I shall merely sketch some of the more noteworthy contours of the concept’s early history, focusing in particular on the changing imagery and distinctions that preceded its emergence in anglophone political theory and practice in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. My historical sketch concludes with the appearance of the recognizably modern conception of party as a principled and loyal opposition, to be tolerated if perhaps not always admired. In tracing this development, I hope to help clarify the connection between the emergence of the idea and the institution of the political party and the ideal of political toleration. My inquiry proceeds in the following way. After briefly outlining the approach against which I shall be arguing, I go on to show that the modern idea of a loyal opposition party emerged haltingly and haphazardly as an older political vocabulary was gradually transformed. This transformation in its turn permitted a series of shifts in political perceptions. These shifts stemmed not only from arguments about what is legitimate and permissible but also from a changing stock of political metaphors, among which the move away from organic or bodily imagery and towards a contractual picture proves to be particularly important. I conclude by examining the changing meaning of ‘party’ in late eighteenth-century American political discourse and some of the implications of these changes for the subsequent theory and practice of toleration.

A False Start One might attempt to narrate the history of ‘party’ by assuming that parties have always existed even though they were until quite recently regarded as an illegitimate species of political organization. The history of ‘party’ would then become not the story of conceptual innovation, but an account of changing attitudes towards something that has always existed, essentially unchanged. This is the view taken, for example, by Harvey Mansfield, Jr, who holds that ‘parties are universal, but party government is the result of the recent discovery that parties can be respectable. Because the reason for partisanship is so simple and compelling, the respectability, not the existence, of party is the distinguishing mark of party government.’3 Such an account presupposes two highly questionable claims. The first is the nominalist claim that political concepts, in this case ‘party,’ have meanings merely by virtue of being names or labels attached by convention to independently existing phenomena. The sec-

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ond is that an emotivist theory of meaning offers an adequate account of the way in which moral and political terms actually function in discourse. According to the emotivist view, what matters for purposes of political analysis and historical understanding are not names but rather the changing feelings and attitudes of political agents towards the thing named. Thus the difference denoted by calling some grouping a ‘party,’ instead of, say, a ‘sect’ or a ‘faction,’ is a psychological one of feeling or attitude. Crudely put, a party is a faction of which one approves, and a faction, a party of which one disapproves. The history of ‘party’ is therefore a nominalist narrative about changing labels combined with a psychological story about changing attitudes towards the phenomenon to which these labels have been attached. As a way of writing the history of the concept of ‘party,’ however, the foregoing account gets matters exactly backward. Far from functioning as labels attached to independently existing phenomena, as suggested by the nominalist theory of meaning, political concepts are themselves partially constitutive of those phenomena. And, contrary to the emotivist theory, feelings and attitudes are more the products than the sources of our conceptually constituted social and political world. Thus, for example, we do not call an action unjust because we disapprove of it; rather, we disapprove of it because we have reason for believing it to be unjust. And we do not call an organization a political party because we approve of it, or, conversely, as a faction because we disapprove of it; rather, we mean to mark an actually existing, politically pertinent – and distinctly non-psychological – difference between parties and factions. To see how this process might work, let us begin by imagining an eminently rational political agent who wishes to act in some new or otherwise untoward way. Let us further imagine that he, like most political actors, is eager to exhibit his behaviour as praiseworthy, or at least legitimate.4 If he is to satisfy both desiderata he must be able to redescribe his actions in terms recognizable within the limits set (however loosely) by an already existing political vocabulary (with its own views of what is good, decent, just, commendable, etc.). It then follows that linguistic form must to some degree shape political content; linguistic limitations constrain political possibilities. If he wishes to communicate with others, our ideally rational agent, unlike Humpty Dumpty, cannot make words mean whatever he wants them to mean. And this, for a political agent, is a consideration of surpassing importance, since he necessarily wishes not only to communicate but also, if possible, to persuade others to follow his new route. He must therefore call on an already existing stock of concepts, if

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his appeal is to be at all intelligible, much less persuasive. By argument, analogy, metaphor, and other means he might, with sufficient skill, be able to alter or extend the range of reference of certain concepts constitutive of the political discourse of his day. But however skilful he is, he will not be able to create concepts ex nihilo; instead he must work within an already established universe of discourse. Hence, as Quentin Skinner notes, ‘the problem facing an agent who wishes to legitimate what he is doing at the same time as gaining what he wants cannot simply be the instrumental problem of tailoring his normative language in order to fit his projects. It must in part be the problem of tailoring his projects in order to fit the available normative language.’5 Although the ‘ordinary language’ that a theorist inherits is rarely his last word, it must of necessity be his first word, lest he be unintelligible to others and even to himself. Even so, conceptual change is not reducible to, or identical with, linguistic change – that is, with the drawing of new distinctions, the coining of new terms, or the extension or alteration of criteria used in applying older terms. Conceptual change and political innovation are as much a matter of non-discursive myths, metaphors, symbols, images, and overarching world pictures as of linguistic extension. As the late Isaiah Berlin reminded us: Men’s beliefs in the sphere of conduct are part of their conception of themselves and others as human beings; and this conception in its turn, whether conscious or not, is intrinsic to their picture of the world. This picture may be complete and coherent, or shadowy or confused, but almost always ... it can be shown to be dominated by one or more models or paradigms: mechanistic, organic, aesthetic, logical, mystical, shaped by the strongest influence of the day – religious, scientific, metaphysical or artistic. This model or paradigm determines the content as well as the form of beliefs and behaviour.6

As George Armstrong Kelly notes, ‘one may observe throughout the long history of political science that it periodically, perhaps even paradigmatically, attaches itself to root metaphors from other surrounding bodies of knowledge and achieves its discourse in them.’7 Political innovation and conceptual change are therefore linked, inevitably and inextricably, to large-scale, often gradual and unconscious shifts in the models and metaphors that dominate our discourse and thereby our lives and our thought. In the late seventeenth century, it was precisely the occurrence of such linguistic and symbolic shifts that allowed the modern concept of

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‘party’ to begin being ‘thought,’ publicly articulated, and defended in a principled and increasingly persuasive way.

Bodies Politic Although factions were familiar to them, the ancients had no concept corresponding to our ‘party.’ In fifth-century B.C. democratic Athens, for example, there were ‘no parties in anything like the modern sense,’ writes A.H.M. Jones, ‘either among the politicians or among the general public.’ Although ‘there were groups or cliques among the politicians,’ these ‘were probably based on personalities rather than principles, and seem to have been temporary.’8 And while there were also the more persistent factions formed along class lines, these were by no means parties. In The Politics, Aristotle describes the polis as a compound whole, greater than the sum of its several ‘parts’ (meros or morion), by which he means the individuals, families, clans, and other partial associations whose interests ideally coincide with those of the whole. A ‘faction’ (stasis), by contrast, seeks its own good rather than that of the community and thereby acts to the detriment of the whole. Thus faction represents an unnatural reversal of the proper ordering of the whole and its several parts.9 Later writers were long content to follow Aristotle’s lead on this matter. Even among Roman writers such as Cicero we find no significant departure from this feature of Aristotelian doctrine. The res publica was said to embody the shared or public interest of the whole, not the partial interest of any individual part or party. Significantly, the English terms ‘party’ and ‘faction’ have entirely different Latin origins. ‘Faction’ derives from factio, ‘making,’ which is connected to the verb facere, ‘to do or act.’ Thus a faction in earliest usage is any group bent on taking matters into its own hands and on making them conform to its own designs. By contrast, ‘party,’ from partire, ‘to partition or divide,’ originally lacks any distinctly political meaning. A party is simply a part of some larger aggregate association. Thus, although there were in the Roman republic factions and intrigues aplenty, these were not political parties in anything like our modern sense. Optimates and Populares did not correspond to oligarchs and democrats, or to conservatives and progressives, but referred instead to groups consisting of ‘leading political figures and their followers.’ Such unprincipled personal entourages and familial factions scarcely deserve to be termed parties, and certainly not in the modern sense.10 Later Christian writers (Augustine to the contrary notwithstanding) were not inclined to doubt the wisdom of Aristotle’s analysis of faction

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and tyranny. As far as faction is concerned, they were, in the main, content to repeat the teachings of ‘the philosopher,’ or, as Dante called him, ‘the master of them that know.’11 The end of wisdom, says Saint Thomas Aquinas, is the bringing of order into human affairs. This order may be of two types. The first consists of arranging separate parts into a coherent and useful whole; this is the sort of order that the builder imparts in constructing a dwelling. A second and altogether ‘different sort of order exists between things which are united by some common end.’ Such is the order of the commonwealth. And since the whole is prior to the parts (partis), the latter cannot properly be said to exist except insofar as they serve and help to constitute the whole. Thus ‘there is no action of the parts which is not also action of the whole,’ and vice-versa.12 Were any individual part to seek its own advantage instead of the good of the whole it ceases to be a part, properly speaking, and becomes instead a faction intent upon tyranny. As late as the fourteenth century, Remigio de’ Girolami, Bartolus of Sassoferrato, and Marsiglio of Padua were still using Aristotle’s account of faction in a form essentially unchanged. They agreed that internal divisiveness or ‘faction’ posed the single greatest threat to the liberty and security of city-republics, and they saw the prevention or elimination of faction as the surest means of muting civil strife and promoting the public good.13 Moreover, they took very seriously – and sometimes quite literally – the classical imagery of a unified political body. The ‘body politic’ could be healthy only as long as its members or parts cooperated and fulfilled their respective functions. No body, corporeal or political, could long survive if its members constantly worked at cross purposes. Indeed the very definition of a diseased or ‘corrupt’ body is that its parts no longer work in harmony for the good of the whole. The point is perhaps made most vividly in Marsiglio of Padua’s Defensor pacis (1324). Invoking the authority of Aristotle’s De motu animalium, Marsiglio writes that ‘the well-ordered animal’ cannot move in response to conflicting commands. ‘For if there were many of these principles and they gave contrary or different commands at the same time, the animal would either have to be borne in contrary directions or remain completely at rest.’ In either case, it would ‘lack those things, necessary and beneficial to it, which are obtained through motion.’ And, as with animal bodies, so also with political ones: ‘The case is similar in the state properly ordered, which [is] analogous to the animal well formed according to nature. Hence, just as in the animal a plurality of such principles would be useless and indeed harmful, we must firmly hold that it is the same in

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the state.’ Marsiglio draws the moral that factions or partial associations, each attempting to impart motion and direction to the political body, can only bring chaos and disorder. A well-ordered body politic must, therefore, have a single unified government. Justice is the harmonious ordering of the several parts or members for the good of the whole.14 Renaissance writers continued to maintain that the presence of factions, sects, and cabals tends to undermine the unity and security of the state. Guicciardini, for one, reiterates the traditional view that factions are disruptive of civic stability and a prime source of political corruption.15 In his Ricordi he hails the ‘praiseworthy and useful citizen’ who ‘renders good service to his country’ by eschewing ‘faction and usurpation [sette e usurpazione].’16 Machiavelli’s account was rather more complex and ingenious. Some divisions (divisioni), he maintains in his Istorie Fiorentine, are injurious and others not. The former group includes all factions or sects formed for private purposes; the latter include any social part, backed by its partisans (partigiani), ‘which maintains itself without cabals or factions [sette].’17 Although Machiavelli in his Discorsi traced the creation and maintenance of Roman republican liberty to the conflict between the nobles and the plebeians, he never treats these contending divisions or parts as parties in any of our several modern senses. Nor does he view them as the short-lived sects that were so ubiquitous in Renaissance Italian politics. Rather, he views nobles and plebeians as large, longlived natural parts or members of the Roman body politic, each exemplifying different ‘tempers’ or ‘humours.’ Out of clashes among ‘diverse tempers [umori diversi]’ come both compromise and ‘the laws favouable to liberty.’18 The venerable imagery of a civic body made medical analogies featuring physicians and remedies almost as commonplace among Renaissance writers as they were among classical authors. In his Dialogo, Guicciardini complains of the difficulty of finding the medicina appropriata for curing the ailments afflicting different parts of the political body.19 Machiavelli’s medical metaphors are spun out in even more lurid detail. Just as leeches may be required to relieve the human body of blood-borne ill-humours, he says, so may the ills of the body politic require equally drastic remedies. Factions are most likely to be formed when natural outlets are blocked,‘and when these ferments cannot by some means vent themselves, their advocates are likely to resort to some extraordinary means, that may bring about the ruin of the republic.’ By contrast, ‘nothing renders a republic more firm and stable, than to organize it in such a way that the excitation of the ill-humours that agitate a state may have a legally

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prescribed means for venting itself.’ One of the sources of faction being the absence of legal remedies for ‘enabling the people to exhaust the malign humours that spring up among men,’ the wise republic will provide legal home remedies to prevent any disgruntled sectarians from calling on the even more malign ministrations of foreign physicians.20 Like Guicciardini, Machiavelli warns that ‘there is no surer way of corrupting the citizens, and to divide the city against itself, than to foment the spirit of faction that may prevail there.’ If it is to be long-lived, a republic must be ‘united and without antagonistic parts [unite e senza parti].’21 Even as he reiterates the traditional admonitions about the evils of faction, Machiavelli holds that controlled conflict among the ‘parts’ can have beneficial consequences, including the promotion of liberty and the prevention of political corruption.22 Machiavelli’s parts are not yet parties; but he makes a noteworthy (although doubtless unintended) move in the direction of political pluralism.23 Despite his fulminations against Aristotle and his repeated railings against ‘the darknesse of School distinctions,’ Thomas Hobbes did not doubt that factions or formed oppositions of any kind are among ‘those things that weaken, or tend to the dissolution of a commonwealth.’ It is ironic that Hobbes, who derided any thinker who relied on metaphors and other ‘abuses of speech,’ should himself have had recourse to that hoariest of metaphors, the body politic, and its attendant medical imagery, in a way that exceeds even Machiavelli. The ‘infirmities of the commonwealth,’ Hobbes insists, ‘resemble the diseases of a naturall body.’ Such ‘internall diseases’ and ‘intestine disorder’ weaken, and eventually kill, the political body. Political convulsions ‘not unfitly may be compared to the Epilepsie, or Falling-sicknesse ... For as in this disease there is an unnaturall spirit, or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the nerves, and moving them violently, taketh away the motion which naturally they should have from the power of the soule in the brain, and thereby causeth violent, and irregular motions, which men call convulsions, in the parts ... so also in the Body Politique,’ which internal convulsions must ‘either overwhelm ... with oppression, or cast ... into the fire of a Civil Warre.’ From this it follows that ‘mixed government’ is a contradiction in terms; for ‘such government, is not government, but division of the commonwealth into ... independent factions.’ This results in a monstrously misproportioned body: ‘To what disease in the naturall body of man, I may exactly compare this irregularity of a Common-wealth, I know not. But I have seen a man, that had another man growing out of his side, with an head, armes, breast, and stomach, of his own: If he had had

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another man growing out of his other side, the comparison [with mixed government] might then have been exact.’ Associations perceived as threats to sovereign authority ‘are as it were many lesser Commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man.’ These ‘little wormes, which physicians call ascarides,’ must be expelled lest the political body perish. Anyone who expects unity to emerge from faction, Hobbes says in De Cive, is as deluded as the ‘daughters of Pelias’: They going to restore the decrepit old man to his youth again, by the counsel of Medea they cut him into pieces, and set him in the fire to boil; in vain expecting when he would live again. So the common people, through their folly, like the daughters of Pelias, desiring to renew the ancient government, being drawn away by the eloquence of ambitious men, as it were by the witchcraft of Medea; divided into faction they consume it rather by those flames, than they reform it.25

Here Hobbes is, of course, speaking of faction, not party. But even when he does use the word ‘party’ – as in ‘the king’s party’ – he refers merely to those who took the king’s part, or side, in the English Civil War.26 That even an apparently radical innovator like Hobbes did not envision anything like ‘party’ in our sense is scarcely surprising. For he – no less than the dreaded Schoolmen, and even Marsiglio, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini – remained wedded, with subtle reservations, to the traditional idiom and imagery of the body politic, with its attendant aversion to anything that threatens its organic integrity and overall health. Just how subtle, and how momentous, these reservations were, we shall see in a moment. More surprising, perhaps, is that Hobbes’s bêtes noires – Levellers like John Lilburne and Richard Overton, Diggers like Gerrard Winstanley, and other radical sectarians – neither favoured faction nor formulated any notion of a legitimate opposition party. To peruse Puritan tracts in search of some recognizable precursor of the political party is to look in vain. The body politic and its allied imagery remained quite firmly intact in Puritan political discourse. Even the most utopian tracts – Winstanley’s The Law of Freedom (1652) foremost among them – envisioned a good society in which no provision was made for parties or organized opposition. Hence it is anachronistic to suggest, as George Sabine does, that Winstanley wrote ‘the first socialist utopia formed in the hopes of becoming a party programme.’27 And although the Levellers were without doubt a democratically organized political movement, it is surely stretching cre-

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dulity to claim, with H.N. Brailsford, that theirs ‘was the first political party ... to organise itself on a pattern of democratic self-government.’28 An opposition movement it surely was, and some of the organizational features of the modern party it arguably had; but there is no evidence to suggest that the Levellers operated with anything like our modern understanding of ‘party.’ What was true of radical English Puritans was, by and large, also true of their more moderate American brethren. Describing ‘a due forme of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall,’ John Winthrop repeats the old maxim that ‘the care of the publique must oversway all private respects ... for it is a true rule that perticuler estates cannott subsist in the ruine of the publique.’29 He went so far as to sanctify the body politic, comparing the Christian commonwealth to the body of Christ: There is noe body but consistes of partes and that which knitts these partes together gives the body its perfeccion, because it makes eache parte soe contiguous to other as thereby they doe mutually participate with eache other, both in strengthe and infirmity in pleasure and paine, to instance the most perfect of all bodies, Christ and his church make one body: the several partes of this body considered aparte before they were united were as disproportionate and as much disordering as soe many contrary quallities or elements but when Christ comes and by his spirit and love knitts all these partes to himself and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world.30

Precisely because individual Christians and their communities were ‘partes’ of one body – the body of Christ – orthodox Puritan discourse had no place or function for disputatious parties, sects, or factions. Nor, despite the deep internal schisms occasioned by heresy and heterodoxy (and the Antinomian controversy in particular), did the discourse of Roger Williams and other dissident Puritans leave any room for disputatious parties. Far from repudiating traditional organic imagery, orthodox Puritans and Antinomians alike accepted and even embellished it.

Contracting Parties Given the widespread agreement about the evils of faction, one might well wonder how the modern political party ever appeared at all. At least part of the answer is to be found in the various ways in which organic

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imagery began to be displaced and replaced by newer pictures of political association. To put it crudely, the idea of the body politic as a natural body began to give way to the notion that it was an artificial body created by contract and agreement. The beginnings of this shift can be seen already in the Puritans, with their resurrection of the old Hebrew idea of a community created by covenant. But the shift is perhaps more readily discernible in their arch-foe, Hobbes, whose account of the commonwealth combines elements of the older and newer pictures. Hobbes’s subtle shift in perspective begins with his admission that the ills of the body politic ‘resemble’ those of the natural body. This amounts to saying that the body politic is – pace Aristotle – not a natural body at all, but a body of an altogether different sort. While the body politic may resemble a natural body in some respects – having, for example, ‘members,’ a ‘head,’ and ‘arms,’ and being liable to ‘intestine disorders’ – it is in fact an artificial body. Men are not only ‘members’ of the commonwealth but also its ‘makers and orderers.’ And the way in which they create this artificial body is by entering into a covenant. By human art and artifice is created the great Leviathan. The irony is intentional: this ‘mortall god’ is no Creator but is, rather, the creation of its own eminently mortal devotees and worshippers. By contract they create a god who will protect them from each other.31 This earthly god exists solely because and insofar as he is useful to his subjects. Monarchs thereby lose all their divinity and more than a little of their majesty. Little wonder, then, that Hobbes was regarded by many monarchists as a seditious wolf wrapped in a cloak of royal purple.32 For Hobbes made the bond between the sovereign and his subjects conditional, resting on an agreement among his subjects that they would obey him only as long as he is able to protect them. This new picture – of a political society created consciously and by contract – marked a momentous shift in Western political thought.33 Instead of depicting a society founded by the solitary lawgivers and heroic founders of antiquity, Hobbes paints a picture of many individuals joining together for the purpose of self-preservation. Far from merging their individual identities into some greater organic whole, the parts or members remain readily identifiable. This is perhaps most vividly portrayed in the original frontispiece to the 1651 edition of Leviathan, in which the body of the sovereign is shown to consist of the clearly discernible bodies of the individual members: his body exists because they create it by making a covenant or contract.

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Now one of the crucial characteristics of a covenant, or contract, is that there must be ‘parties’ to it, that is, people who take part or participate in making and keeping it. This is the sense in which the term is used, even today, in ostensibly non-political activities. Lawyers, for example, draw up contracts referring to the signers or participants as ‘parties’ (as in ‘the party of the first part hereby agrees to convey to the party of the second part’). And when reserving a table in a restaurant one will quite likely be asked how many people are in one’s party. The question is not, of course, a political one.34 Perhaps surprisingly, ‘party’ was not much used in political contexts until the seventeenth century. One reason why ‘part’ acquired political connotations was that in some quarters in England after 1660, politics began to be pictured in contractual terms rather than in organic bodily terms. Whereas a ‘body politic’ is composed of parts, the contractual body is created by agreements between parties. But seventeeth-century parties were not yet those of modern usage. Rather, the contracting parties were still understood as ‘parts’ of the larger society which, despite their disagreements, agree to live according to some rule of common equity. If these are not yet parties in our modern sense, neither are they properly describable as factions or sects. The danger, however, is that one of the parties will break faith with the others and attempt to dominate them for its own private purposes. Such a party would then have ceased to be a ‘party,’ or ‘part,’ and would have become a ‘faction’ instead. The distinction between ‘party,’ or ‘part,’ and ‘faction’ became increasingly evident during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-80, when the names Tory and Whig were first heard.35 Most Tories took the older Cavalier view that the king, ruling as he does by Divine Right, was not party to any contract made by mere mortals and could not be bound by its terms. Against this, the Whigs – the name, originally employed as an epithet, comes from the Whiggamores, radical Scottish covenanters of the 1640s – argued that kings could, like any other mortals, be bound by oaths or covenants and that, by supporting the accession of his Catholic brother James II to the throne, Charles II had violated the terms of the Restoration Settlement of 1660. In 1681, after several attempts at compromise failed, Charles dissolved Parliament, ruling until his death in 1685 without one. When James succeeded his brother, he in effect attempted to repeal not only the specific terms of the Settlement but also the very idea that the relations between Crown and country could be pictured in anything remotely resembling contractual terms. The Glorious Revolution

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of 1688 amounted to a militant reaffirmation of the Whigs’ contractualist claim that monarchs too are parts who are, as it were, parties to an agreement by which they are constitutionally bound. It was this principle, more than any other, that gave rise to and served to sustain the distinction between Whigs and Tories, the first political divisions that recognizably resemble modern political parties. This Whiggish picture of ‘party’ receives its most subtle, abstractly theoretical, and radical defence in John Locke’s Second Treatise. ’Tis not a change from the present state,’ writes Locke, ‘which perhaps Corruption, or decay has introduced, that makes an Inroad upon the Government, but the tendency of it to injure or oppress the People, and to set up one part, or Party, with a distinction from, and an unequal subjection of the rest.’36 Any ‘part, or Party’ attempting such a move ceases to be a proper party to the contract and becomes instead a ‘rebel’ who makes his party into a faction opposed to the good of the larger community. This, says Locke, in a faint but still audible allusion to the older organic imagery of the body politic, is the justification for ‘cutting off those Parts, and those only, which are so corrupt, that they threaten the sound and healthy.’37 That Locke, a physician by training, should have relied so infrequently upon medical analogies surely says a good deal about the demise of the older organic imagery and its replacement by newer notions of contract, consent, and agreement among distinct parts or parties.

Liberty and Faction Other tracts of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries also suggest that, so far as ‘party’ and ‘partisanship’ were concerned, a subtle shift in political self-understandings was under way. To be sure, there was as yet no defence of ‘party’ per se, nor was there any well-articulated idea of a loyal opposition. ‘Party’ was still by and large taken to be synonymous with ‘faction,’ whose mischiefs were frequently decried, and political opposition was often equated with treason. This mainstream view was expressed, for example, in ‘the Trimmer’ Halifax’s Political Thoughts and Reflections (ca. 1690). ‘The best Party,’ writes Halifax, ‘is but a kind of a Conspiracy against the rest of the Nation.’38 This and other oft-repeated warnings were turned by Real Whig polemicists in a different direction. Invoking the names of Niccolò Machiavelli, Harrington, and John Locke, among others, the Real Whigs or Commonwealthmen sought to consolidate and extend the English republican tradition.39 John Toland’s The Art of Governing by Partys (1701) begins con-

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ventionally enough by resurrecting the imagery of the political body racked by the disease of partisanship: ‘of all the Plagues which have infested this nation ... none has spread the contagion wider, or brought us nearer to utter ruin, than the implacable animosity of contending Partys ... it is the most wicked masterpiece of tyranny purposely to divide the sentiments, affections, and interests of a people.40 But Toland then goes on to argue that partisan divisions, although often evil, need not always be so. It is not parties per se but rather their ‘implacable animosity’ that poses the gravest political threat to the nation. What may therefore be needed is not the abolition of parties but their being put to some better public purpose. Factiousness and freedom go hand in hand; the point is to keep both from getting out of hand. This view Toland developed in his Memorial of the State of England (1705) and at greater length in The StateAnatomy of Great Britain (1716), where he draws a parallel between religious and political pluralism. ‘Every division,’ he writes in The State-Anatomy, ‘is not simply pernicious: Since Parties in the State, are just of the like nature with Heresies in the Church: sometimes they make it better, and sometimes they make it worse; but held within due Bounds, they always keep it from stagnation.’41 In warning of the dangers of stagnation Toland echoed Machiavelli’s view that divisions are not inherently evil but can, given the right conditions, be beneficial in allowing the political body to vent its ill-humours. This, minus the medical imagery, had also been the central theme of Robert Molesworth’s Account of Denmark (1694). Molesworth saw in the purportedly factionless state of Denmark the peace of the grave. ‘Where there are no Factions, nor Disputes about Religion which usually have a great influence on any Government,’ he warns, the possibilities for political reform and renewal are stifled. While such uniformity of opinion is doubtless a ‘vast convenience to any Prince,’ it precludes popular reform and leads inevitably to political stagnation.42 In a similar spirit Walter Moyle asks, ‘Who is there that would not prefer a factious liberty before a settled Tyranny?’43 Of course such unorthodox views were still widely opposed and roundly denounced. Even so, we see in this period the first glimmerings of the idea that at least some political divisions are based on principles of some sort, however odious opponents might think them, and that such divisions, although potentially dangerous, are perhaps unavoidable in a free state. Moreover, some writers went so far as to suggest that honest and honourable men might disagree about what the common interest was and how it might best be served, and that differing views about such

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matters ought to be, if not welcomed, then at least tolerated. Thus, while warning of the evils of faction, the anonymous author of The State of the Parties (1692) avers that the differences between Whigs and Tories stem not from one’s serving the common interest and the other’s not, but rather from their having different conceptions of the common interest of the nation to which both are loyal after their fashion. The presence of – and tolerance towards – such partisan contentiousness came to be taken by some as an identifying feature of the English national character. The unnamed author of The Political Sow-Gelder (1715) declares that Englishmen were and would remain as varied in their politics as England was in her climate. And the author of The Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brethren (1734), an anonymous work usually attributed to Henry Fielding, remarks that parties and partisans are inevitable in a political climate in which freedom and liberty prevail.44 Along with the emerging idea that parties, properly understood, embody principles of some sort came an appreciation of the mutability of our moral and political concepts and an awareness that meanings, like minds, can be changed through political argument. John Toland, for example, notes that ‘Patriots and loyalists, court and country-parties, tho in themselves words significant enough, yet they are become very equivocal, as men are apt to apply them: whereas Whig and Tory cannot be mistaken; for men may change, and words may change, but principles never.’45 What Toland failed to note, however, is that since principles can only be stated in the mutable medium of language, they are not immutable after all. For the most part, arguments in favour of ‘party’ were neither legal nor logical but political and rhetorical ones in which actions and practices were redescribed, new distinctions made, and old distinctions recast or abandoned. Chief among these was, of course, the distinction between ‘faction’ and ‘party.’ To defend faction and factiousness, as Molesworth and Moyle had done, doubtless had a certain shock value; but such a defence could scarcely be sustained, given the prevailing views about the evils of faction. Hence the importance of drawing the distinction in ways that might prove politically acceptable. The distinction was redrawn variously, with some writers preferring to focus on their respective members’ motives, others on organizational features or political functions, and still others on some combination of these. In An Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain (1717), for example, William Paterson reports on the (perhaps imaginary) meeting of ‘the Wednesday’s Club in Fridaystreet,’ as follows:

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Although other defenders of ‘party’ drew the distinction differently, the importance of these arguments lies in the fact that distinctions were being drawn at all: they reveal that ‘party’ was coming to be viewed in a novel way, as an acceptable and even valuable English political institution. Critics of ‘party,’ by contrast, attempted to show that parties were nothing new under the sun, but rather were an old phenomenon parading under a new name. Anti-party pamphleteers purported to show that parties were really factions after all, or, failing that, that parties tended to degenerate into factions. But it remained for Bolingbroke, ‘the classic anti-party writer’ and ‘fountainhead of anti-party thought,’47 to construct a last-ditch defence against the encroachment of ‘party.’ Bolingbroke criticized parties and partisanship by ingeniously resurrecting and deploying a number of Old Whig arguments. Contending that the Crown had been captured by the corrupt ministry of Robert Walpole and his New Whigs, Bolingbroke appealed to earlier Whig defences of the Glorious Revolution, in hopes of creating a ‘Patriot King’ freed from the snares of narrow and corrupting party politics. Such a king could ‘defeat the designs, and break the spirit of faction, instead of partaking in one and assuming the other.’48 And while the king might temporarily favour one party over another, he would remain aloof from both. The irony in this defence of royal prerogative is that the conditions that make it possible must be brought about by a new kind of party – a ‘country party’ devoted not to narrow partisan interests but to ‘principles of

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common interest.’ Cutting across the distinction between Whig and Tory, Bolingbroke’s country party would include men of good will from both parties and therefore would not be a party, strictly speaking. ‘A party thus constituted,’ he maintains in A Dissertation upon Parties (1748), ‘is improperly called party. It is the nation speaking and acting in the discourse and conduct of particular men.’49 Bolingbroke’s vision of a non-partisan party was advanced, not as an inevitable feature of constitutional government, but rather as a temporary expedient and a necessary evil. Yet in advancing and defending the idea of a party to end all parties Bolingbroke was actually conceding the necessity, importance, and justifiability of such an institution. And in so doing he had to acknowledge that there could, in principle, be parties of different kinds and that ‘party’ was not necessarily synonymous with ‘faction.’ Indeed, he further reinforces the latter point by asserting that ‘parties’ inevitably ‘degenerate into absolute factions.’50 Now since, strictly speaking, something (an acorn, a party) can hardly be said to be identical with the thing that it eventually becomes (an oak, a faction), it therefore follows, contrary to Bolingbroke’s intentions, that parties are not factions. He cannot, in the end, have it both ways. Too ingenious by half, Bolingbroke’s argument against parties proved in the end to be singularly self-subverting and became an arrow in the quiver of pro-party forces. David Hume, in two particularly noteworthy essays – ‘Of Parties in General’ and ‘The Parties of Great Britain’ – brought together a number of earlier arguments in a novel synthesis. His argumentative and rhetorical strategy consisted of conceding that parties were factions but that the latter are of several sorts, not all of which are equally noxious. He began by reaffirming the traditional view that factions are evil ‘weeds.’ But like Molesworth and the Real Whigs, Hume held that factions are ‘plants which grow most plentifully in the richest soil,’ that is, ‘they rise more easily, and propagate themselves faster in free governments.’ Different forms of free government give rise to factions of quite different kinds. ‘Personal factions,’ for example, ‘arise most easily in small republics. Every domestic quarrel, there, becomes an affair of state.’ Such personal or familial factions as those found in republican Rome and Florence are increasingly rare in the modern state. More common nowadays are ‘parties’ or ‘real factions’ which ‘may be divided into those from interest, from principle, and from affection.’ The party from interest, says Hume, ‘is the most reasonable, and the most excusable.’51 The third – ‘parties from affection’ – ‘are founded on the different attachments of men towards

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particular families and persons, whom they desire to rule over them’ even though ‘they are in no wise acquainted ... and from whom they never received, nor can ever hope for any favour.’52 But it is the second sort of party that represents something new under the sun. ‘Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs.’53 Parties professing to stand for some set of political or philosophical principles represented an entirely new wrinkle. Hume was among the first to note that this novelty was rapidly becoming commonplace. Indeed, as he observes in ‘Of the Original Contract,’ ‘no party, in the present age, can well support itself, without a philosophical or speculative system of principles, annexed to its political or practical one.’54 Such parties being unavoidable in a free state, the cure would then be worse than the disease. Like it or not, parties from principle were becoming an ever more familiar feature of the political landscape. Hume ably described, if he did not altogether approve of, this development.55 By 1755, when Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, his definition of ‘party’ was already out of date. Swimming against an ever stronger current of conceptual change Johnson defined ‘party’ as ‘a number of persons confederated by similarity of designs in opposition to others, a faction; ... side, persons engaged against each other, as, of your party; cause, side.’56 Then, as now, dictionaries merely follow fashion; they do not dictate it. Johnson, however, at least in his view of ‘party,’ followed political and philosophical fashion at an ever-increasing distance. The phenomenon found extraordinary and unaccountable by Hume and ordinary and unacceptable by Johnson was presently justified by means of an argument that was both principled and pragmatic. In Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), Edmund Burke defended the practice of partisan ‘connexion’ against the anti-party fulminations of the Earl of Chatham (William Pitt).57 As prime minister, Chatham claimed to be interested in ‘measures, not men,’ and had had some success in luring partisans away from their parties, including the Rockingham Whigs with whom Burke was affiliated. Once separated from their party individuals then became subject to manipulation by the Chatham ministry. Seeing through this strategy of divide and conquer, Burke denounced non-partisanship and began defending the idea of principled opposition.58 Burke contends that, because the older and politically disastrous division between monarchists and parliamentarians

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no longer exists, principled opposition is now not only tolerable but commendable. Still, although ‘the great parties which formerly divided and agitated the kingdom are known to be in a manner entirely dissolved,’ there still remains a politically ambitious and corrupt ‘court faction’ or ‘cabal’ which, while hiding behind a facade of non-partisanship, seeks to advance its own sinister interests at the country’s expense.59 ‘This cabal has, with great success, propagated a doctrine which serves for a colour to those acts of treachery.’ That doctrine, says Burke, is ‘that all political connexions are in their nature factious, and as such ought to be dissipated and destroyed; and that the rule for forming administrations is mere personal ability, rated by the judgment of this cabal upon it.’ The wilful failure to distinguish between faction and party ‘connexion,’ he continues, is politically pernicious: That connexion and faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional statesmen. The reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles nor experienced in each other’s talents ... no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a publick part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy.60

‘Part’ and ‘party’ are intertwined, in that one cannot reasonably hope to ‘act a publick part’ outside of one’s party: In a connexion, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the publick. No man ... can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematick endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.61

Thus the ‘parties from principle,’ which Hume had found so strangely novel, become, for Burke, paradigmatic of ‘party’ per se. ‘Party,’ as Burke defines it, ‘is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint

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endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.’62 Although Burke’s definition of ‘party’ hardly met with universal acceptance, a momentous if still subtle shift in the terms of anglophone political discourse was nevertheless well under way.

‘Party’ in America Nowhere was this shift more rapid or more pronounced than in the newly formed United States of America. Its new Constitution was defended and criticized in the idiom of republican discourse, which, from Machiavelli up through Moyle and the English Commonwealthmen, exhibited an ambivalent attitude towards divisions within a republic. On the one hand, factions were divisive and posed a danger to the body politic; on the other hand, however, the tensions and struggles between such groups could help to keep the body politic vigorous and fit. Which of these consequences came about depended upon how that body was constituted. In a well-ordered body the tensions were useful and healthy; in an ill-ordered body they were destructive of the very sinews of civility. This ambivalence within republican discourse was especially evident in the late 1780s, during the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. Federalist friends and Antifederalist foes of the Constitution were virtually unanimous in agreeing about the dangers of ‘party’ and ‘faction,’ which they tended to treat as synonymous terms. This synonymy began to break down, however, as it was realized that partisan divisions may well be a by-product of political liberty. In 1786, Benjamin Franklin, for example, decried ‘the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters.’ And yet, Franklin acknowledged – as had Hume and, earlier still, Molesworth and Toland – that some good can come out of party wrangling. Parties, Franklin writes, ‘will exist wherever there is liberty; perhaps they help to preserve it. By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth are struck out, and political light is obtained.’63 John Adams and others among the American Founders express similar views.64 It is James Madison, however, who most ingeniously resolved the tension, not once but twice. During the ratification debate Madison and his co-author Alexander Hamilton mince no words in condemning the evils of ‘faction’ or ‘party,’ which they treat as interchangeable terms. In Federalist 10, Madison equates ‘party’ and ‘faction,’ decrying the designs of ‘the most numerous party, or, in other words the most powerful faction.’ But then, like Fran-

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klin (and Hume, his probable source), Madison goes on to suggest that the formation of factions is inevitable in a free state. ‘Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.’ ‘But,’ Madison adds immediately, ‘it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.’ The ‘latent causes of faction’ being ‘sown in the nature of man,’ it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate them. The secret, Madison argued, lay in controlling the harmful effects of faction. And that could best be done by constitutionally creating the conditions under which factions would multiply and proliferate. Only in this way, Madison maintained in 1787, could the most dangerous faction of all – ‘a majority ... of the whole ... united by some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community’ – be effectively prevented from coming into existence.65 In the proliferation – and toleration – of numerous factions lies the best, indeed perhaps the only, defence of liberty. After the Constitution was ratified in 1788, Federalist ranks were split. Siding with Thomas Jefferson against Alexander Hamilton, Congressman Madison sought a second solution to the problem of parties. This solution dispensed with the old equation of ‘party’ and ‘faction.’ In Madison’s hands ‘party’ loses its negative associations and becomes instead a more or less neutral term for designating opposing political groups. Henceforth, it is not the term ‘party’ per se that carries some sort of negative (or positive) connotation, but the adjective specifying the kind of party to which one is referring. Madison, moreover, periodizes the history of American political parties in a novel way. Finally, and most significantly, Madison refers to his own political association as a party. Let us examine each of these argumentative moves more closely. ‘In every political society,’ writes Madison in ‘Parties’ (1792), ‘parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them.’ Parties may be either ‘natural’ ones ‘aris[ing] out of the nature of things’ or ‘artificial’ ones resting on unnatural divisions among men. Madison makes it clear that this is precisely the distinction to be drawn between his and Jefferson’s party – ‘the Republican party, as it may be termed’ – and Hamilton’s ‘anti Republican party.’66 Working with this new – and non-pejorative – understanding of ‘party,’ Madison, in ‘A Candid State of Parties,’ periodizes the political history of

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America in a novel fashion. ‘The most interesting state of parties in the United States may,’ Madison says, ‘be referred to three periods.’ From 1776 to 1783, ‘those who espoused the cause of independence and those who adhered to the British claims, formed the parties of the first period; if, indeed, the disaffected class were considerable [i.e., numerous and important] enough to deserve the name of a party.’ That is, the American revolutionaries constituted a party – a significant concession, and certainly one that neither Madison nor most of his contemporaries would have made several years earlier. ‘From 1783 to 1787,’ he continues, ‘there were parties in abundance, but being rather local than general, they are not within the present review.’ The second significant period occurred in 1787–88, the years of the ratification debate, which saw the contest between two new ‘parties, the Federalists and the Antifederalists.’ Now that this contest has been decided in favour of the former, these parties no longer exist. The third period, he holds, is the present one in which Hamilton’s Federalist Party is opposed by ‘the Republican party’ of Jefferson and Madison. Unlike earlier, short-lived divisions, the division between ‘the anti republican party, as it may be called’ and ‘the republican party,’ he observes, ‘is likely to be of some duration.’67 Note that Madison does not flinch from speaking of ‘the republican party,’ although he never once calls it a faction. Nor, even more significantly, does he refer to Hamilton’s ‘anti-republican party’ as a faction. Madison thus implicitly places both parties on a par – quarrelsome, contentious, but equal and animated by principle. In this way ‘party’ loses its older – and distinctly pejorative – association with ‘faction’ and becomes, depending on the adjective used to designate it, an honourable or dishonourable political affiliation. The extent to which the distinction between ‘party’ and ‘faction’ was now clearly and definitively drawn is dramatically underscored by Jefferson’s fury at Hamilton for ‘daring to call the republican party a faction.’68 The rapidity with which this crucial distinction was drawn is, in retrospect, remarkable. Like most of his contemporaries Jefferson had begun by equating ‘party’ and ‘faction,’ condemning them as divisive and out of place in a free society. As late as 1789 he denied being a party man. To belong to a party ‘is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.’ ‘I am,’ he wrote, ‘neither federalist nor antifederalist ... I am of neither party, nor yet a trimmer between parties.’69 But it was not long before the ostensibly non-partisan Jefferson was speaking proudly of ‘our party’ and acknowledging that ‘wherever there are men there will be parties and

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wherever there are free men they will make themselves heard.’ So long as no party places itself above the law, ‘all will be safe ... and you need never fear anarchy or tyranny.’70 It is scarcely an exaggeration to suggest that Madison and Jefferson in word and deed reconstituted the concept of ‘party.’ In their discourse it became a relatively long-lived political organization devoted to the furthering of its own aims and principles in peaceful and law-abiding opposition to other parties. It was just this conceptual shift that made it possible for Jefferson and Madison to be the co-founders of the first modern political party.71 With this development the early history of ‘party’ ends, and we enter a world recognizably modern and more clearly akin to our own, in which the toleration of opposing viewpoints is institutionalized and at last regarded as respectable and legitimate.

Notes 1 J.A.W. Gunn, Introduction, in J.A.W. Gunn (ed.), Factions No More: Attitudes to Party in Government and Opposition in Eighteenth Century England (London: Frank Cass, 1972), 1. 2 Indispensable collections of original sources include Alan Beattie (ed.), English Party Politics, 2 vols (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970); and Gunn, Factions No More. See also the useful surveys in Caroline Robbins, ‘“Discordant Parties”: A Study of the Acceptance of Parties by Englishmen,’ Political Science Quarterly 73 (Dec., 1958), 505–29; Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970); Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Klaus von Beyme, ‘Partei, Faktion,’ in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Kosellek (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon juridisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1978); Klaus von Beyme, ‘Partei,’ in Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Grunder (ed.), Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 7 (Basel, 1989); Pasi Ihalainen, The Discourse of Political Pluralism in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1999). 3 Harvey Mansfield, Jr, Statesmanship and Party Government: A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 2. A similar tack is taken in Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System, 4, 39. 4 The following account is adapted from Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 1, Preface. 5 Ibid., xii–xiii.

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6 Isaiah Berlin, ‘Does Political Theory still Exist?’ in his Concepts and Categories (New York: Viking, 1979), 154. 7 George Armstrong Kelly, ‘Mortal Man, Immortal Society? Political Metaphors in Eighteenth-Century France,’ Political Theory 14 (Feb., 1986), 5–29, at 9. 8 A.H.M. Jones, Athenian Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), 130–1. Perhaps the closest modern counterparts to such political groupings would be the parties formed by and around such charismatic leaders as the late Juan Peron and Charles de Gaulle. 9 See Aristotle, Politics, trans. and ed. by Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 1301–b. 10 F.E. Adcock, Roman Political Ideas and Practice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 60–2. 11 Dante, Inferno, trans. by J.D. Sinclair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), Canto IV, ll 130–1. 12 Thomas Aquinas, ‘Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I,’ in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings, ed. by A.P. D’Entreves (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 189–93. 13 See Skinner, Foundations, vol. 1, 53–65. 14 Marsiglio of Padua, The Defender of the Peace, trans. by Alan Gewirth (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), 83–4. 15 See J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 261–3. 16 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi (New York: S.F. Vanni, 1949), 2–3. 17 Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, in Opere Complete (Firenze: Alcide Parenti, 1843), 149. 18 Machiavelli, Discorsi, Bk. I, ch. 7, Opere Complete, 261. 19 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 252, n71. 20 Machiavelli, Discorsi, Bk. I, ch. 7, Opere Complete, 265–6. 21 Ibid., Bk. III, ch. 27, 394. 22 For a very different account of Machiavelli’s views on party, see Harvey Mansfield, Jr., ‘Party and Sect in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories,’ in Martin Fleisher (ed.), Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 209–66. For criticisms of Mansfield’s interpretation, see ‘Commentaries’ by Mark Phillips and J.A.W. Gunn in ibid., 267–81. 23 This view is advanced and defended by Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Originality of Machiavelli,’ in his Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (London: Hogarth, 1979), 25–79. 24 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. by C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), ch. 29 passim. On the role of metaphor and rhetorical redescrip-

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tion in Hobbes, see Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. Part II. Hobbes, De Cive, in Man and Citizen, ed. by Bernard Gert (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1972), 255. Hobbes, Behemoth, in English Works, ed. by William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839), vol. 6, 316. George Sabine, Introduction to Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. by George Sabine (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1941), 5. H.N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, ed. by Christopher Hill (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 317. John Winthrop, ‘A Model of Christian Charity’ (1630), in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558–1794, ed. by Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 90. Ibid., 84. Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, ch. 17–21. For this and other charges levelled against the author of Leviathan, see Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), passim. I do not mean to suggest that the ‘contractual’ picture of the origins of the state is entirely novel; on the contrary it is very old indeed. A rudimentary version of social contract theory was advanced by Sophists such as Lycophron and was put into the mouth of Glaucon in Plato’s Republic (358e–362; cf. Laws 683c–694). This contractual view is introduced, however, only in order to be refuted. Likewise Aristotle denies that the polis is an artificial or temporary alliance (koinonia symmachia) resting on the prior agreement of the contracting parties and dissolvable at will (Politics 1280b 10). Cicero makes much the same point (De Re Publica, I: 25; III: 13). That this anti-contractarian orthodoxy met with no successful challenge until the seventeenth century might be explained less in terms of the perceived inadequacy of Aristotelian arguments than in the breakdown of bodily or organic imagery that underlay and served to sustain those arguments. Although it could be mistaken for one, with predictably amusing results. The following story is told about a Soviet diplomat newly arrived in Washington, DC, during the Cold War. Making reservations at a fashionable Washington restaurant, he was asked how many people were in his party, whereupon the surprised diplomat replied, ‘Fourteen million.’ See Beattie, ‘Introduction,’ in his English Party Politics, vol. 1, 5. John Locke, Second Treatise, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), para. 158. Ibid., para. 171.

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38 Halifax, Political Thoughts and Reflections (written ca. 1690; published London, 1750), in The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax, ed. by Walter Raleigh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 225, in Gunn, Factions No More, 44. 39 See Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman (New York: Atheneum, 1968), passim. 40 John Toland, The Art of Governing by Partys (London, 1701), 7–8, in Beattie, English Party Politics, vol. 1, 19–20. 41 John Toland, The State-Anatomy of Great Britain (London, 1716), 102–3, in Gunn, Factions No More, 54. 42 Robert Molesworth, Account of Denmark (London: T. Goodwin, 1694), 25–51. 43 Walter Moyle, ‘An Essay on the Roman Government,’ in his Works (London: Printed for J. Darby, 1726), vol. 1, 112. 44 Anonymous, The Political Sow-Gelder (London, 1715); Anonymous, The Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brethren (London, 1734), 8. 45 Toland, The State-Anatomy of Great Britain, 18. 46 William Paterson, An Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain (London, 1717), 44–5, in Gunn, Factions No More, 82–3. 47 Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System, 18. 48 Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King (London, 1749; reproduction Menston: Scolar Press, 1971), 62. 49 Bolingbroke, A Dissertation upon Parties (first publ. London, 1735); reprinted in his Works (Philadelphia: Carey and Hant, 1841), vol. 2, 48. 50 Bolingbroke, Idea of a Patriot King, 47. 51 David Hume, ‘Of Parties in General,’ in his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. by Eugene Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1985), 56, 59. Compare ‘Of the Parties of Great Britain,’ in ibid., 65. 52 Hume, ‘Of Parties in General,’ in Essays, 63. 53 Ibid., 60. 54 Hume, ‘Of the Original Contract,’ in Essays, 465. 55 In this respect Hume agreed with Bolingbroke. See Wolfgang Jäger, Politische Partei und Parlementarische Opposition: Eine Studie zum Politischenen Denken von Lord Bolingbroke und David Hume (Berlin: Duncker and Humboldt, 1971). 56 Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (London: John Williamson, 1755). 57 On the rhetorical structure of Burke’s arguments, see James T. Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), ch. 5; and Christopher Reid, Edmund Burke and the Practice of Political Writing (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1985), passim. 58 Burke’s master, the Marquis of Rockingham, articulated very succinctly the

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67 68

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then-new connection between the older concept of ‘part’ and the modern party dedicated to particular political principles and committed to playing the part of a loyal opposition. ‘We and only we of all the parts now in Opposition,’ he said in 1769, ‘are so on principle.’ Quoted in Archibald Foord, His Majesty’s Opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 315. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, in his Works (London: C. and J. Rivington, 1826), vol. 2, 220. Ibid., 329. Ibid., 330. Ibid., 335. Quoted in Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System, 2–3 n1. See John R. Howe, Jr, The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), ch. 7. James Madison, Federalist 10, in The Federalist, ed. by Terence Bull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 41. Madison, ‘Parties’ (1792), in The Papers of James Madison, ed. by William T. Hutchinson, Robert Allen Rutland, and William M.E. Rachal (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), vol. 14, 197–8. Madison, ‘A Candid State of Parties,’ in ibid., 371–2. Jefferson to Madison, 29 June 1792, in Thomas Jefferson: Political Writings, ed. by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 412. Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 13 March 1789, in ibid., 411. Jefferson, ‘Notes for the First Inaugural Address,’ in ibid., 421. Hofstadter, Idea of a Party System, 2; Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), 162.

four

Millenarianism and Tolerance RICHARD POPKIN

Norman Cohn, in Pursuit of the Millennium and Warrant for Genocide, attempted to link millenarian activities with the worst kinds of intolerance. He surveyed millenarian groups from medieval times to the present and included both communism and Nazism, viewed as secular millenarian movements, in his analysis. Among the groups he investigated were several aggressive groups of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who believed it their divinely given duty to prepare for the millennium by scourging and eliminating the enemies of God: Jews, the Antichrist and his allies, who were identified as the Pope and his officials, and other infidels.1 But millenarianism in this early modern period is a more complex phenomenon than Cohn’s work would suggest. In fact, one kind of millenarianism, which I shall call ‘benign egalitarian millenarianism,’ actually played an important role between 1500 and 1830 in promoting tolerance in Europe and America. This relationship between millenarianism and tolerance can be seen developing in Spain after the establishment of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews. Cardinal Ximenes, the primate of Spain and the most powerful figure in Iberia after 1492, devoted enormous energies and resources to preparing for the expected imminent return of Jesus and the onset of the millennium. As part of this preparation, he founded the University of Alcalá and established the project to publish the first polyglot Bible, with texts in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and ancient Aramaic paraphrase of the Pentateuch. This project required knowledge of Aramaic (the language of Jesus) and Hebrew, as well as tolerance, of reformed views and of the New Christian scholars (i.e., converted Jews), who actually did the work and most of whom were Erasmians advocating

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a spiritualized non-doctrinal Christianity in place of the rigid formulation of the Inquisition. The editor of the Hebrew and Aramaic volumes was Alfonso de Zamora, a Jewish yeshiva student until 1492, who only converted to Christianity in 1506 when he was made professor at Alcalá. As the polyglot Bible project shows, Ximenes was quite willing to tolerate an intellectual elite associated with a broadly defined, reformed Christianity. At the same time he was extremely intolerant of Muslims, and of backsliding Christians of Jewish ancestry.2 Spanish millennial expectations stimulated toleration of a sort for the ‘Indians,’ that is, the native peoples of the recently ‘discovered’ New World The aforementioned Ximenes was the leader of the reformed Franciscans, and around 1500, he sent some of his fellow Franciscans to the New World to establish a millennial kingdom with a policy of complete toleration of Indian customs, beliefs, and activities. Indians were to be converted only by love and were to be protected from the intolerance of the conquistadors. The Indians, fortunately, had not yet been corrupted by European customs and decadent religion, and Ximenes believed that keeping them in an innocent state would guarantee that that they could accept God’s message freely, when it was presented to them from the heavens.3 The Dominican Bartolemé de Las Casas (from a converted Jewish family), who had accompanied Columbus on one of his voyages, also championed complete toleration of Indians. He managed to get Pope Paul III to issue a bull that began with the remarkable statement: ‘All peoples of the world are human.’4 Las Casas insisted on the possibility that some of the elect of God, who according to the Bible, will be recalled at the Second Coming, could be Indians; therefore all Indians should be tolerated and protected, lest one or more of the elect be hurt or damaged. Las Casas sought to create a tolerant kingdom in Chiapas, where he was the bishop, and he barred Spaniards other than his followers from entering the territory.5 For both Ximenes and Las Casas, toleration came with the expectation that the Indians should become Christians freely; forced conversions, as had occurred en masse in Spain and Portugal, were worse than useless in their eyes, because such conversions engendered deep-seated hostility towards God’s message. Smaller-scale approaches to toleration also occurred in the New World. Gregorio Lopez, for example, a mysterious mid-sixteenth-century Spaniard devoted to love of Indians, resided in a hut in Mexico while attempting to help the Indians by improving their health and general living conditions. His disciple, the bishop of Mexico, described him as the perfect man, one in whose soul God and Jesus could find a home.6 Lopez’s

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only writing was a commentary on Revelation.7 There is no indication that Lopez sought to make the Indians into Christians, but he did seek to create a better physical and spiritual world for them, from which they could make their own choices about religion. During the seventeenth century, varieties of millenarian thinking continued to proliferate and, with them, novel approaches to the problem of toleration. The Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Vieira, who was the apostle to the Indians in Brazil, assigned a significant role to Jews. His History of the Future foresaw the Jews returning soon to Portugal, as free citizens. The Second Coming of Jesus would then take place (also in Portugal), and the Jews would be taken to rebuild Jerusalem. Everyone would be saved in the ensuing millennium and would become pure Christians by free choice.8 There were limits, however, to what the institutionalized church in the seventeenth century was ready to accept, as the Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos discovered. Molinos was the man who sought to initiate the process for canonizing Gregorio Lopez. Molinos was also closely associated with Quietism and he embraced a mystical millenarianism. He taught that all persons could quiet their souls and thus allow God directly to perform all their actions. God-ordained actions cannot be bad; therefore, all behaviours are to be tolerated. Neither the institutional church, nor intercession by Jesus or Mary, has a role to play in securing personal salvation.9 Molinos’s opponents claimed that he was not a Christian and that his views would turn people away from Christianity; the Jesuits in Italy, who managed to have him arrested and his views condemned, even claimed he was a Jew who had never even been baptized;10 and Rome abandoned the project to canonize Lopez. Despite Molinos’s fate, Quietism survived, and, by the latter part of the seventeenth century, Jean Labadie and Anna Maria van Schurman, two Protestant Quietists active in the Lowlands and northern Germany, had established spiritual-millennial-communal societies. From the Quietist notion that the Holy Spirit can act immediately through people, these Quietists reasoned that all daily human activity is holy; thus the setting aside of special holy days and observance of services is unnecessary. These communities admitted no creed and rejected all established Christian churches as degenerate and irrelevant to the spiritual life, but community members nevertheless saw themselves as ardent, pious Christians.11 Two Labadist colonies were eventually set up in the New World, perhaps the first utopian communist communities in America.12 Their societies in Europe as well as America were the first religious communist

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groups to institute (at least for awhile) complete toleration in matters of religious belief and practice.13 Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1677), a secretary of the Prince of Condé,14 conceived a millenarian scenario of toleration. To prepare for the millennium, he claimed, in his Du Rappel des Juifs (1643), that certain steps should be taken: first, the Jews should be readmitted to France and antiSemitism should be legally banned; next a Jewish-Christian church (with no doctrines or practices repugnant to Jews) should be established. Then the Jewish Messiah would come to France, and take the Jews and the king of France to rebuild Jerusalem. The Messiah would rule the millennial world, with the king of France as his regent; Jews and all peoples of the world would be saved regardless of their origins, creed, or nation. Salvation would include all the descendants of Adam, those who are outside the biblical world (i.e., the pre-Adamites, a category which, for La Peyrère, included most of the people on the planet), as well as those within it. La Peyrère’s vision thus sees universal, worldwide toleration as an ingredient of millennial preparation and a characteristic of the millennium itself.15 Some radical English and Dutch millenarians such as Henry Jessey, Peter Serrarius, and John Dury, as well as their friend Rabbi Nathan Shapira of Jerusalem, developed the tolerant view that one can be a Jewish Christian or a Christian Jew.16 A question was posed to Dury: can one be a faithful follower of the Law of Moses and a true and believing Christian? He carefully weighed the pros and cons and concluded that the answer was ‘yes,’ but one had best practice this in Amsterdam, not in Germany.17 In his forty-five years of trying to unite all the Christian churches, Dury developed a doctrineless, creedless Christianity, a moral rather than theological view that could be accepted by everyone.18 Dury was in the forefront of pressing for the readmission of the Jews to England, even without their conversion. He did, however, insist on some restrictions on their business activities and on their being willing to consider Christian views. The latter requirement, he believed, would lead to their conversion, as they came to appreciate the ‘pure Christianity’ of Puritan England.19 There was a flowering in the eighteenth century of this tolerant JewishChristian millenarianism in the writings and activities of Ezra Stiles, Immanuel Lacunza, and Abbé Henri Grégoire. Ezra Stiles (1727–1795) had studied at Yale University and was greatly influenced by the millenarian views that he found in the writings of Sir Isaac Newton and William Whiston. After his appointment as minister to a Congregationalist con-

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gregation in Newport, Rhode Island, Stiles became involved with the local Jewish community.20 He even met with all the rabbis and Jewish scholars who passed through the area and discussed with them their views about when the Messiah would come, and what life would be like in the millennium. He very gently sought to convert the Jews, but met with no success. He developed his own millenarian views out of these many discussions with the Newport Jews and their visiting brethren.21 Stiles wrote, in Hebrew, in an effort to convince his favourite rabbi, Haym Isaac Karigal,22 who had come to Newport in 1773, to agree with him about when the millennium would come into being, and about what the characteristics of a projected joint Jewish and Christian millennial world would be. Stiles hoped that Jews would be able to marry non-Jews and that everybody would live as equals in this future world. He prepared several drafts of the essay, all of which he sent to the rabbi; the rabbi, however, only commented that Stiles’s Hebrew was improving.23 Later, when Stiles became the president of Yale, he attempted to make that institution the centre of Jewish studies and the focus of millennial teaching and activity of the American Revolution. One graduate of Yale, the preacher David Austin, announced that the Son of Man had been born in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776. Austin advanced a project for returning the Jews to Palestine when the millennium began (first in America and then throughout the world), via ships to be built in New Haven, Connecticut.24 Although the tolerationist views of Stiles and Austin were Christian, there is no evidence that they ever seriously tried to convert Jews. They wished that all Jews would become Christians but accepted them as they were. Stiles is supposed to have proposed that Hebrew rather than English, the language of the oppressor, be named the official language of the new United States of America. Immanuel Lacunza (1731–1801) was a Chilean Jesuit who escaped to Italy when the Jesuit order was suppressed. In Italy he wrote a revolutionary millenarian work, La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Magestad (the title page attributes the work to one Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, a Christian Hebrew).25 His Venetian Jewish contemporaries wanted to print the work because it was so tolerant,26 but Lacunza was afraid it would be condemned (as it later was); consequently, from around 1789 until its first printing in 1812, it circulated in manuscript form. Among the readers of the manuscript was the Abbé Henri Grégoire, who saw it in France during the French Revolution and was apparently much influenced by it.27 The French prelate said that it was an ‘ouvrage supérieur à tout ce qui a paru en faveur de l’avènement intermédiare.’28 The manuscript circulated in Spain

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and in South America, from Havana to Cape Horn. Its original Spanish was also translated into Latin and Italian. It was first printed in Cadiz in 1812, and then in London, by General Belgrano in four volumes for distribution in Argentina. A French abridgment appeared in 1818, and a Mexican printing in 1821–22.29 An English translation by ‘the Millenarian’ appeared in 1826 and the edition by Edward Irving in 1827. (The British Library has a copy of the Irving edition with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s copious notes.30) Lacunza’s work predicts that the glorious and majestic return of Jesus (which was believed imminent) will occur at the outset of the millennium, rather than one thousand years into that era, the more common claim. It stirred up revolutionary sentiments during the late eighteenthcentury and nineteenth-century struggles in Europe and Latin America: in preparation for the Second Coming, so the reasoning went, all people would have to be granted equality.31 In the era of Napoleon, with its frequent speculation about the relation of contemporary events to the scenario in the biblical book of Revelation, Lacunza’s work seemed to validate immediate millenarian viewpoints. Catholic partisans, loyal to its teachings, were numerous in Spain and Latin America, at least from 1800 until 1941, when Lacunza’s millenarianism was condemned.32 The work has been and still is associated with Latin American revolutionary movements and has been reprinted and distributed often, secretly as well as publicly. The broad dispersion of manuscripts of the work throughout Latin America attests to its popularity, and the many extant refutations of its arguments reveal the degree to which it has been regarded as a terrible threat by the religious and political establishments.33 Lacunzan writings also became very important for Protestant chiliasts, especially among the Seventh Day Adventists in North and South America.34 One of Lacunza’s younger contemporaries in France, Abbé Henri Grégoire (1750–1831), advanced an Enlightenment millenarianism.35 Grégoire first entered the political arena in 1787 with his prize-winning work, Essai sur la régénération physique, morale, et politique des Juifs. Writing in answer to a question (How can the Jews be made happy and useful in France?) posed by the Academy of Sciences of Metz, Grégoire adopted a millennial vision: the moral, political, and physical regeneration of the Jews was necessary, he asserted, to prepare them for the forthcoming millennium. The goal of regeneration requires that Jews be given Enlightenment education, personal freedom, better living conditions, social and political equality, and French citizenship.36 Grégoire was elected to the Estates General of 1789 as a representative

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of the First Estate, and he soon became a leader in the French Revolution. When the lower clergy delegation made its famous exodus from the First Estate and joined forces with the Third Estate, thereby establishing the base for the National Assembly, Grégoire was at their head.37 In the National Assembly, he fought for Jewish citizenship, for the rights of Protestants, for freedom and political rights for Blacks, and for the abolition of slavery. Grégoire originally advocated that all churches become institutions administered directly by the state, a necessary step in his opinion if their corrupt status was to be overcome. His work led to the establishing of the Constitutional Catholic Church, and he was the first Constitutional Bishop to be appointed.38 During the Reign of Terror, Grégoire was the saviour of the French scientific community. He prevented the destruction of scientific instruments and laboratories, and even saved some of the scientists themselves. Science was needed as part of Enlightenment education for everyone in his program. In the same era, when atheism became the state religion of France, Grégoire refused to accept it, or to give up his own beliefs. His fiery speech to the National Assembly in 1793 defended religious freedom and advocated liberty for sects; every religious group, he asserted, ought to be allowed to operate freely and independently.39 Appealing to the tenets of the American Constitution, Grégoire managed in 1795 to have a law passed separating church and state in France.40 After just a few years, however, this law was revoked, and it was not until the twentieth century that church-state separation was permanently established in France. Grégoire delivered an apology for Bartolomé de Las Casas, in 1800, to the National Institute in Paris. Las Casas’s efforts to save the Indians were, by then, being blamed for helping to initiate the African slave trade. Grégoire’s apology fused Las Casas’s egalitarian millenarianism with his own. He insisted that Las Casas, along with ‘all benefactors of mankind,’ held ‘men of all countries to be members of a single human family, obligated to love and to assist one another and endowed with the same rights.’41 Whatever its connection with the Enlightenment, Grégoire’s lifelong fight for toleration of all religions and races was still part of a Christian millenarianism. The events of the French and American Revolutions and the Napoleonic period strongly suggested to him that the millennium would soon begin. The most that could be done to prepare people for the Second Coming was to give them the ability to recognize the truth when it was presented to them. To do this, they needed equal opportu-

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nity, Enlightenment education, and equal treatment by society. Alhough he did nothing personally to convert people, Grégoire hoped that people reformed by his projects would freely choose to become Roman Catholics. He kept up his opposition to restrictive societies under Napoleon and the Restoration, and he died while gathering support for the Greek independence movement. The millennial tolerationists covered above almost all expected that their toleration policies would, in the end, make everybody pure and true Christians, if God so willed this result. In the interim (which they did not think would last very long), a legal tolerant world had to be created. Their advocacy and actions on behalf of such a world probably did at least as much to produce modern tolerant societies as the betterknown activities of deist and secular groups in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and America. The millenarian Grégoire and the deist Condorcet joined in leading the Societé des Amis des Noirs in fighting for the end of slavery in France, the American colonies, and the new United States of America; and for the legal equality of Blacks.42 Through his writings and personal contacts Grégoire, who outlived Condorcet by more than thirty-five years, had much effect on abolitionism in Europe and America, and he supported its cause whatever the religious affiliation of its local leaders. A historical curiosity of the time is the influence of La Peyrère, with regard to toleration of the Jews, on both Grégoire and Napoleon. Although La Peyrère’s millenarian writings had disappeared from general consideration in the eighteenth century, Grégoire discovered them and used them in arguing for Jewish equality. Then, in 1806, Napoleon decided to re-establish the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the ancient Jewish world, which last had met just before the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (The Messiah is supposed to re-establish the Sanhedrin when He or She comes.) As part of the propaganda for the Paris Sanhedrin, Napoleon had the official newspaper of France announce the rediscovery of a writing that was curious and rare, by one Isaac La Peyrère, who had asserted that the Messiah would rule the world with the king of France. Napoleon was apparently ready and willing to play his role, spreading Enlightenment equality everywhere, making Jews equal citizens of France, and ending their ghetto existence in French-captured territories.43 To move on to the present world, one of the legacies of egalitarian millenarianism is, I believe, Catholic liberation theology. This body of thought, as explained to me by a Jesuit leader in El Salvador a few years

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ago, embraces a tolerance theory. The kingdom of God, he said, is emerging in Morazan, a mountainous region of El Salvador, which was, at the time of our conversation, rebel-controlled territory. The kingdom will eventually spread over the world. He told me that liberation theology is rooted in the views of the medieval millenarian prophet Joachim de Fiore, of Antonio de Vieira, and of Immanuel Lacunza, among others.44 Egalitarian millenarianism was pushed aside by the great nationalist and socialist ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by the turn of millenarianism in the nineteenth century to scriptural fundamentalism and anti-Darwinism, and by the more recent fusion of fundamentalism with Zionism, which is advanced by many American fundamentalist leaders.45 Grégoire has had no real constituency in the political groupings of modern France. But, after long neglect, the French government finally recognized him, in its 1989 celebrations of the bicentennial anniversary of the Revolution; his ashes were interred in the Pantheon, along with the remains of other heroes of Enlightenment France, an act acknowledging his importance as a herald of modern enlightened tolerant society. Grégoire’s entry into the Pantheon represents a reconsideration of the egalitarian millenarian basis for tolerance. It is interesting that the Catholic Church refused to take part in the event, because Grégoire was a renegade Catholic who refused to honour the primacy of the Pope; the cardinal of Paris, a Jewish convert, had his own private meeting, however, to honour Grégoire.46 The Societé des Amis de l’Abbé Grégoire, over twenty years ago when I met its president, consisted of half-a-dozen Jews and half-a-dozen Blacks. Now it may have a much greater constituency, since a postage stamp has been issued in Grégoire’s honour and France’s Museum of the History of Science has mounted a special exhibit in his honour.47 A final thought: possibly someone is publishing Lacunza’s opus in Chiapas as I write; there is a rumour that Sub-Commander Marcos, the Mexican guerrilla leader whose movement has attracted world-wide attention, is a Portuguese Jesuit.48 Alma Guillermoprieto’s article about Chiapas in 1994 in the New Yorker describes the Bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz, as a utopian who sees the downtrodden Mayas of the area as the chosen people, about to be redeemed, an event that will prelude the universal redemption of mankind.49 The bishop has translated the biblical book of Exodus into various Mayan languages to help the Indians understand their situation and the wonderful things that will happen starting in the jungles of Chiapas. Guillermoprieto spoke with Sub-Commander

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Marcos, whom she characterizes as a ‘utopian’ who sees human salvation emerging first in Chiapas, then in Mexico, and finally in the rest of the world. This picture, if correct, would indicate that egalitarian millenarianism is alive and well in the rebellious state of Chiapas. The puzzling fact that the authorities in Mexico seem loathe to use governmental power to put down or control the rebellion may indicate that it is seen as having some special spiritual status potentially radiating throughout Mexico. Cualtemoc Cardenas, the left-wing candidate for the Mexican presidency in 1994, was the first political figure to have tried to court the Chiapans by going there to speak to them. An account of his visit indicates that he was a bit put off by the spiritual certainty of their leader, which contrasted with his own pragmatic plans for improving economic and social conditions in southern Mexico. The results of the Mexican election, genuine or fraudulent, suggest that most Mexicans are not yet ready for the kind of redemption being offered from Chiapas. Marcos, however, announced that he and his groups would refuse to recognize the results of the election and would non-violently, spiritually, oppose the government. As we move on into our own new millennium, other egalitarian millenarian movements may emerge, seeking to deal with the disasters of the so-called scientific age of our present and to bring us back to searching for the bases of human equality in our world community. Perhaps such a development would provide some of the energy and outlook we need, if we are to join with all of humanity in trying to make a better world.

Notes 1 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961; first published 1957), and Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the World Jewish Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Penguin, 1970; first published 1967). 2 See Richard H. Popkin, ‘Christian Jews and Jewish Christians in Spain, 1492 and After,’ Judaism 41 (1992), 248–67. 3 On the activities of the Reformed Franciscans in America, see John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956). 4 This appears in a Papal Bull issued in June 1537. On this see Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia: Univer-

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sity of Pennsylvania, 1949); and Richard H. Popkin, ‘The Philosophical Bases of Modern Racism,’ in Richard H. Popkin, Richard A. Watson, and James E. Force (eds.), The High Road to Pyrrhonism, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 81. Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Selection of his Writings, trans. and ed. by George Sanderlin (New York: Knopf, 1972), Part 4. See Vida, y Escritos del venerable varon Gregorio Lopez (Madrid: Antonio Francisco de Zafra, 1678). This book first appeared in English in 1638 in an edition printed in Paris, and last appeared as The Life of Gregory Lopez (Boston: Henry Dager, 1857). See also Fernando Ocaranza, Gregorio Lopez, el hombre celestial (Mexico: Ediciones Xochitl, 1944). Gregorio Lopez, Tratado del Apocalipsi (Madrid: Antonio Francisco de Zafra, 1678). In this work, Lopez interpreted the symbols in terms of European history. On Vieira, see Raymond Cantel, Prophétisme et messianisme dans l’oeuvre du Père Vieira (Paris: Ediciones Hispano Americano, 1960); and A.J. Saraiva, ‘Antonio Vieira, Menasseh ben Israel et le Cinquième Empire,’ Studia Rosenthaliana 6 (1972), 26–32. On the biography of Molinos, see E. Pacho, ‘Molinos,’ in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne 1977–80), vol. 10, pt. 2: 1486–1514; Jose Angel Valente, ‘Ensayo sobre Miguel de Molinos,’ in Miguel Molinos (ed.), Guia Espiritual (Barcelona: Barral Editores, 1974), 28–40; and Paul Dudon, S.J., Le Quiétiste espagnol Michel Molinos (1628–1696) (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1921). On Molinos’s views, see the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 13, 1554–73; Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 12, pt. 2, 1486–1515; and Enciclopedia universal ilustrada, vol. 35, 1528–31. In Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, Los Judeoconversos en España y America (Madrid: Ediciones ISTMO, 1971), Molinos is described as ‘la última personalidad importante conversa desde el punto de vista religioso’ (a converso being a Jewish convert). The note at this point reports that the text of Molinos’s condemnation posted in the churches of Madrid describes Molinos as an ‘Aragonese, descended from Jews.’ See Gilbert Burnet, ‘Relating to the Affair of Molinos and Quietism,’ in Three Letters concerning the Present State of Italy Written in the Year 1687 (n.p., 1688), 1–93. Molinos’s doctrines are described on 29ff. On 28, Burnet reports that ‘because Molinos was by his birth a Spaniard, it has been given out of late, that perhaps he was descended of a Jewish or Mahometan Race, and that he might carry in his Blood, or in his first Education, some seeds of these Religions’ (ital. in original). See also Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 84–5. It is curious that the only known fact about Molinos’s trip from Spain to Italy is

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that when the boat stopped at Livorno (Leghorn), he disembarked and visited the town’s Jewish ghetto, after which he continued on to Rome. See Justo Fernandez Alonso, ‘Una bibliografia inedita de Miguel Molinos,’ in Anthologia Annua (Rome: Institute Español de Historia Ecclesiastica, 1964), vol. 12, 293–321, which gives the text of a biography written by one of Molinos’s supporters from the time of his condemnation. The item about his visit to the Jewish quarter in Livorno is on 301. See Trevor J. Saxby, The Quest for the New Jerusalem: Jean de Labadie and the Labadists, 1610–1744 (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987). For more on Anna Maria van Schurman, see Choosing the Better Part: Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678), ed. by Mirjam de Baar et al., trans. by Lynne Richards, International Archives of the History of Ideas 146 (Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1996). David Mason’s The Life of John Milton (London: Macmillan, 1877), vol. 5, 595, lists the beliefs of the Labadists as (1) God may and does deceive man; (2) Scripture is not necessary to salvation, the immediate action of the Spirit on souls being sufficient; (3) there ought to be no baptism of infants; (4) truly spiritual believers are not bound by law or ceremonies; (5) Sabbath observance is unnecessary, all days being alike; and (6) the ordinary Christian Church is degenerate and decrepit. A similar list appears in Jacques Basnage de Beauval, Annales des Provinces-Unis (The Hague: n.p., 1726), vol. 2, 53. Saxby, Quest, ch. 12 and 13. On the Quietism of Labadie and van Schurman, see Richard H. Popkin, ‘Fideism, Quietism and Unbelief: Skepticism for and against Religion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,’ in Marcus Hester (ed.), Faith, Reason, and Skepticism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 121–54 and 169–74. On La Peyrère, see Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676): His Life, Works and Influence (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987). Isaac La Peyrère, Du Rappel des Juifs, vols. I–V (n.p., 1643); and Popkin, La Peyrère, ch. 4, 53–9. This view was also espoused by the Quaker, Samuel Fisher, who asked, ‘Is the Light in America then any more insufficient to lead its Followers to God, than the Light in Europe, Asia, Africa, the other three parts of the World? I have ever lookt upon the Light in all men (since I began to look to it in my self) as one and the self-same Light in all where it is.’ For this quote, see Samuel Fisher, ‘Rusticos ad Academicos, in Exercitationibus Expostulatoriis, Apologeticus quatuor. The Rustick’s Alarm to the Rabbies: or, the Country Correcting the University, and Clergy, and (not without good cause) Contesting for the Truth, against the Nursing-Mothers, and their Children’ (London: n.p., 1660), in The Testimony of Truth Exalted (London: n.p., 1679), 696.

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16 Cf. Richard H. Popkin, ‘Jewish Christians and Christian Jews in the Seventeenth Century,’ in Richard H. Popkin and Gordon M. Weiner (eds.), Jewish Christians and Christian Jews from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 57–72. 17 This appears in an unpublished writing in the Hartlib Papers, ms. 25/4/1–7, University of Sheffield. 18 Richard H. Popkin, ‘The End of the Career of a Great Seventeenth-Century Millenarian: John Dury,’ Pietismus und Neuzeit 14 (1988), 203–20. 19 For more on this subject, see David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 20 On the Jewish community of Newport, see Morris Aaron Gutstein, The Story of the Jews of Newport: Two and a Half Centuries of Judaism, 1658–1908 (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1936), and the article ‘Newport,’ in Encyclopedia Judaica. The Jewish community of Newport was the first in colonial America. 21 On Stiles, see Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). 22 Most information about Rabbi Karigal comes from Stiles’s literary diary. See Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary, ed. by Franklin Bowditch Dexter (New York: C. Scribner, 1901), vol. 3, 395–6. See also Arthur Chiel, ‘The Rabbi and Ezra Stiles,’ American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61 (1972), 294–312, and ‘Ezra Stiles and Rabbi Karigal,’ Yale Alumni Magazine (March 1974), 16–22; and Richard H. Popkin, ‘Millenarianism in England, Holland, and America: Jewish-Christian Relations in Amsterdam, London, and Newport, Rhode Island,’ in S. Hook, W. O’Neill, and R. O’Toole (ed.), Philosophy, History, and Social Action, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 349–71. 23 The various versions of Stiles’s essay on the millennium appear in Ezra Stiles, Ezra Stiles Papers, ed. by Harold E. Selesky, 22 Reels (New Haven: Yale University Library, 1976), Reel 3. Rabbi Karigal wrote to Stiles on 27 May 1774 from Barbados, where he was then serving a congregation: ‘I am very glad to find you are advancing so well in Hebrew.’ He then added, ‘as soon as I am at leisure, I shall examine your text.’ There is no indication he ever did so. The rabbi’s letter appears in ibid., Reel 3. 24 On David Austin, see Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 116–19; Ruth Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and David Austin, ‘The Downfall of Mystical Babylon,’ in The Millennium, ed. by David Austin (Elizabethtown, NJ: Shepard Kollock, 1794), 413–15. 25 On Lacunza’s life, see Alfred-Félix Vaucher, Une célébrité oubliée: le P. Manuel de

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Lacunza y Diaz (1731–1801) de la Société de Jésus, auteur de La Venue de Messie en gloire et Majesté (Collonges-sous-Salve: Imprimerie Fides, 1968, Nouvelle édition revue); and Leroy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers (Washington: Review and Herald Press, 1946), vol. 3, 303–24. Vaucher, Une célébrité, 25. Grégoire described how he obtained a manuscript copy, transcribed from the one in the possession of the Archbishop of Ravenna. See Henri Grégoire, Histoire des sectes religeuses (Paris: Potey, 1814), 201 n2. Vaucher, Une célébrité, 36, says that the archbishop had his manuscripts by 1785. The last two volumes of Grégoire’s manuscript copy are in the Bibliothéque de l’Arsenal, Paris. Grégoire, Histoire, 201. The French l’avènement intermédiare (intermediate coming) refers to the return of Jesus at the beginning of the millennium. Grégoire apparently had a manuscript of a Latin translation of the Spanish original (cf. Vaucher, Une célébrité, 25). A discussion of the various manuscript versions and printings of the work in Spanish, Latin, Italian, French, and English appears in Vaucher, Une célébrité, 25–52. Manuel Lacunza (Juan Josafat Ben Ezra, a converted Jew), The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, translated from the Spanish with a preliminary discourse by Edward Irving (London: L.B. Seeley, 1827), cited in Vaucher, Une célébrité, 46. It has been said that Irving received his copy of the earlier Spanish printing from the renegade Jesuit, Blanco-White, whom he met in Coleridge’s home. The prevailing post-millenarian theory of the time was conservative in that it foretold that the expected great changes would take place a thousand years into the future, when Jesus returned. In contrast, Lacunza’s pre-millennialist account expects the changes to occur in the very near future. See Manuel Lacunza, La Venida del Mesias, ed. by Mario Gongora (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1973). On the fortuna of Lacunza’s work, in manuscript and print, in Latin America, see the two works by Alfred-Félix Vaucher: Une célébrité oubliée, 150–71, and Lacunza, un heraldo de la Segunda Venida de Christo (Mexico: Ediciones Interamericanas, 1970), ch. 15–17, 73–85. On this see Vaucher, Une célébrité, 132–4. Both Vaucher and Leroy E. Froom, who have written much on Lacunza, were Seventh Day Adventists. An American digest of Lacunza writings was published in California by Adventists as A New Antichrist, ed. by William D. Smart (Los Angeles: n.p., 1929). The early Argentinian revolutionary and Adventist Ramos Mexia (1773–1825) was heavily influenced by Lacunza. See Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4, 920–7.

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35 On Grégoire, see Ruth Necheles, The Abbé Grégoire, 1787–1831: The Odyssey of an Egalitarian (Westport: Greenwood, 1971). 36 Grégoire’s essay is published as Essai sur la régéneration physique, morale, et politique des Juifs (Metz: Impr. de C. Lamort, 1789). On the essay contest, see Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Schocken, 1970), 328ff. 37 Grégoire’s diary of the meetings of the First Estate and his move to the Third Estate is in the Bibliothéque de Port Royal in Paris. A short account of this appears in Carnot’s ‘Notice historique sur Henri Grégoire,’ in Henri Grégoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses (Paris: Baudouin Frères, 1828–1845), vol. 6, ii–iv. 38 Talleyrand, who was a regular Catholic bishop and supported the Constitutional Church, ordained Grégoire. 39 Henri Grégoire, Discours sur la liberté des cultes (An III de la Revolution [1794]). In the enlarged 1828 edition of his Histoire des Sectes, vol. 1, ch. 4, Grégoire gave his account both of the campaign against religion during the Reign of Terror and his attempt to stop it. 40 On this see the chapter ‘An Aspect of the Problem of Religious Freedom in the French and American Revolutions,’ in Richard H. Popkin, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 308–24. 41 See Necheles, Grégoire, 174. The citation is from her translation of Grégoire’s Apologie. 42 On this see Richard H. Popkin, ‘Condorcet, Abolitionist,’ in Condorcet Studies, vol. 1, ed. by Leonora C. Rosenfield (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1984), 35–47. Condorcet’s bases for tolerance are compared with Grégoire’s on 42ff. 43 Cf. Richard H. Popkin, ‘La Peyrère, the Abbé Grégoire, and the Jewish Question in the Eighteenth Century,’ Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 4 (1975), 79–102. 44 The leading proponent of Lacunza’s ideas in recent years, the Seventh Day Adventist Alfred-Félix Vaucher, saw Lacunza as coming out of the tradition of Postel, Campanella, and Vieira. 45 On this see Richard H. Popkin, ‘The Christian Roots of Zionism,’ Contentions, no. 2 (1993), 99–125. 46 See the article in the New York Times (13 Dec. 1989), A16. A Jesuit, Michel Riquet, is quoted as saying that Grégoire ‘fought before during and after the revolution for recognition that Jews, Huguenots and blacks should enjoy the same civil rights as all men.’ 47 I have recently learned that the Swiss scholar Hans Werner Debrunner is preparing a new biography of Grégoire, with a good deal of his correspondence.

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48 Even now nobody seems to know who Sub-Commander Marcos actually is. Most of his public statements have been translated and published in a special issue of the Anderson Valley Advertiser of Booneville, California, dated 3 August 1994. From this material, one gathers that Marcos was a philosophy student at the University of Mexico twenty years ago, that he has an ironic wit like Kierkegaard’s, and that he is happy keeping his identity a mystery. 49 See Alma Guillermoprieto, ‘Letter from Mexico: Zapata’s Heirs,’ New Yorker (16 May 1994), 52–63.

five

The Practice of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Late Eighteenth-Century Württemberg HA RTM UT LE H MA NN

In the context of our general theme, and in particular in the context of this chapter, two questions seem of special interest: First, was there progress in the degree of tolerance towards sectarian groups in the course of the eighteenth century? The assumption underlying this question is the widespread belief that religious tolerance ruled when enlightened thought triumphed. Second, how valid is the assumption that – because of economic motives – absolutism, and enlightened despotism in particular, tended to be more tolerant in religious matters than the established churches, both Catholic and Protestant? Is there a difference in the way enlightened political authorities and enlightened church authorities treated nonconformists? My examples are taken from Württemberg, the southern German duchy where, since the late seventeenth century Pietism had grown to become a strong, although never dominant, element. My point of departure is 1743. In this year a law concerning private assemblies of Pietists, the Generalreskript über die Privatversammlungen der Pietisten, the so-called Pietistenreskript, was passed in Württemberg.1 This law gave Pietists the right to assemble freely under certain conditions. In the decades before 1743, the right of Pietist conventicles to meet had been based on customary law. When Duke Karl Alexander, a Roman Catholic, came to power in Württemberg in 1733, the conventicles were in jeopardy, as were the Estates and their right to assemble. Württemberg Pietists praised God’s wisdom, God’s wise and just rule, when Karl Alexander died in 1737, after a reign of only four years. His successor, Duke Karl Eugen, was still a minor; therefore, one of his relatives was called in as a temporary administrator.

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In the following years, in domestic politics, Georg Bernhard Bilfinger, the president of the Church Council (Konsistorium) and a follower of the early Enlightenment, was most influential. With another Catholic duke poised to assume power (Karl Eugen would reach the age of majority in 1744) Bilfinger took care to reaffirm all laws concerning the Protestant religion and the rights of the Estates. Furthermore, he sought to give a legal basis also to those customary religious practices, which in his opinion, agreed with the principles of Enlightenment or supported what can be called allgemeine Frömmigkeit (popular piety). In formulating the Pietistenreskript of 1743, Bilfinger made good use of a legal opinion given by Johann Jakob Moser (who was to become very famous in later years) to the imperial city of Reutlingen in 1734. After Pietists and anti-Pietists in Reutlingen had started to quarrel publicly, the city magistrate had asked Moser for sound legal advice. Moser asserted that assemblies of all kinds should be allowed, including those in which ‘divine matters’ were being discussed. Political authority is not threatened by such assemblies, he argued, nor is the church. Experience showed, he asserted, that participants in such assemblies are hard working and thrifty and that the following rules should therefore be observed: Pastors should be asked to participate in the assemblies; at the very least, they should be informed of planned meetings. Men and women should be allowed to meet, also young folks and separatists, that is, any people who refused to attend official church services, as long as they do not form a majority. With regard to the time of the meetings, there should be two restrictions: Conventicles should not meet late at night, and they should never be held during the hours of church services. Should there be abuse, Moser argued, one should be careful not to punish those who support the general good; in particular, one should not believe all the complaints made by pastors about Pietists and separatists. In preparing the Pietistenreskript, Bilfinger was also influenced by the leader of Württemberg Pietism, Johann Albrecht Bengel. In the early 1730s the founder of the evangelical community at Herrnhut, Nikolaus Ludwig Count Zinzendorf, had visited Württemberg several times. No doubt he had hoped to win new followers. More importantly, however, he had sought an official honorary position such as a prelacy from the Württemberg church and an honorary doctorate of theology from the University of Tübingen. Both of these titles, or even one of them, Zinzendorf had hoped would help him in leading and protecting his new religious movement, which was an offspring both of older Moravian traditions and of Halle Pietism, as established by August Hermann Francke.

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Zinzendorf’s enthusiasm had very much impressed some of the most talented young Württemberg Pietists, like Johann Christoph Oetinger. Even though Zinzendorf failed to obtain his goals in Württemberg, Oetinger and some of his friends left the city in the mid-1730s to join his movement. This was a shock for Bengel and the patriarchs of Württemberg Pietism. Reflecting on this incident, Bengel informed Bilfinger that it was also in the interest of the duchy to regulate the private assemblies of Pietists in such a way that foreign intruders would no longer able to interfere in their affairs.2 As a result, the Pietistenreskript of 1743 reflects not only the views of Bilfinger, but also those of Moser and Bengel. Let me explain its most important points. In addition to church services, family prayers, and private devotions (Hausandachten), special religious assemblies should be legal. The local pastor should be informed. Married couples should attend such meetings together, or not at all. Assemblies should not be conducted in remote locations, or during church services, and on weekdays they should be conducted only if they did not obstruct everyone’s duties and business. During the meetings, it should be strictly forbidden to talk about other people and to discuss political or ecclesiastical matters: ‘Vor der weltlichen Obrigkeit soll man beten, aber also, dass es nicht Stacheln und Vorwürfe, sondern Liebe und Gehorsam beweise’ (One should pray for the authorities, but in a manner which contains neither stings nor reproach but only love and obedience).3 Every kind of separation from the established Protestant church should be avoided. Foreigners not known to the local pastor should have no access. Unproven, mystical, dangerous, nonconformist teachings, in particular discussions about defects of the church should be forbidden. No one should be allowed to attempt to interpret the Bible freely. In conclusion: The members of religious assemblies should strictly observe these rules, and local pastors should strictly control their flocks. In the history of Württemberg, and in the history of Württemberg Pietism, Bilfinger’s Pietistenreskript deserves special attention. Through this law a certain degree of religious pluralism was officially sanctioned within the Protestant church of the duchy. The Pietistenreskript expressed the conviction that it was more important to strive to be pious than to be orthodox, of course, as long as one was and remained obedient in political matters and industrious in all others. These aims were supported by political and church authorities, and Bilfinger even managed to formulate the law in agreement with the interests of mainstream Württemberg Pietism, as represented by Bengel. At the same time, Bilfinger’s law left

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no doubt that religious visionaries should be excluded from religious life and that religious enthusiasm should be discouraged. Even after the Pietistenreskript of 1743, separatists of a more fanatical sort could not hope for much understanding and tolerance. Duke Karl Eugen reigned long, from 1744 until 1793. Before 1770 the political liberties of the Estates of Württemberg were at stake; after 1770 there was a period of reform and transition. In the 1750s and 1760s the duke attempted to curtail, even to abolish, the influence of the Estates. At first he succeeded but in the end he failed. The imprisonment of Johann Jakob Moser on the Hohentwiel was the climax of this struggle; Moser emerged as a popular hero and martyr.4 Württemberg Pietists were especially aggrieved by the new splendour of the Stuttgart court, which they abhorred and considered to be in total contrast with Christian ethics. Their relationship with the duke’s rule was conditional, however, not absolute. In 1770, when the duke made his peace with the Estates, and when he seemed to begin to observe a less luxurious life, leading Pietists were prepared to be involved in what they called a policy of Christian reform. The duke, in turn, showed special interest in two of the Pietists, Johann Christoph Oetinger and Philipp Matthäus Hahn. Oetinger possessed a reputation as an expert in chemistry. While his teacher Bengel had studied salvation history in order to understand ‘God’s book of history,’ Oetinger, who had returned from Herrnhut to Württemberg in the 1740s, made chemical experiments to better understand ‘God’s book of nature.’ It was due to the duke’s direct intervention that Oetinger was promoted within the church hierarchy to become prelate of Murrhardt. There were salt pits at Murrhardt, and the duke hoped that Oetinger would be able to transform them into a profitable business and enterprise. Hahn, another of Bengel’s disciples, was known to be a mathematical and technical genius. Among other things, he constructed clocks. In the tradition of Bengel, he believed that the apocalypse was near and that Christ would return in the year 1836. Thus, the exact measuring of time was important to Hahn, and his clocks showed two sorts of time: one that he called secular; the second, divine. Only the secular scale, obviously, was of interest to the duke. With Karl Eugen’s help, and bypassing older and more qualified pastors, Hahn was given the rich parish of Kornwestheim, and later, the even more lucrative parish of Echterdingen. By providing Hahn with excellent material conditions in which to pursue his inventions, the duke hoped to see the whole duchy profit.

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This is not the place to tell the story of Oetinger’s experiments, which failed totally, or the story of Hahn’s clock constructions, which succeeded in an admirable way. Both Oetinger and Hahn have to be mentioned in our context because they were severely censured by the church authorities in the 1770s and early 1780s. In the late 1760s and the early 1770s, Württemberg church authorities observed that the number of separatists who were no longer ready to comply with the Pietistenreskript of 1743 was growing. At more and more places conventicles were being held without the consent of the local pastor. In 1775, 1776, and 1777, therefore, the Church Council decided to send copies of the Pietistenreskript to all parishes and to admonish all pastors to strictly apply this law. During the same years, Oetinger and Hahn published speculative theological treatises on God’s coming kingdom and on the apocalypse of St John. In the view of leading church politicians, these books provided popular Pietism and separatism with unsound theological arguments. Thus Oetinger and Hahn seemed to be responsible for the troubling new wave of separatism. In particular, Hahn’s parish of Kornwestheim had become a centre of popular religious assemblies. As early as 1774 the Church Council sent a special decree to the superintendent responsible for Hahn’s parish. It claimed that Hahn’s sermons contained unproven theological opinions (‘nicht gründlich genug geprüfte Meinungen in Theologicis’).5 The superintendent was asked to observe Hahn closely and tell him that he should preach God’s pure word, and nothing else. Hahn, it seems, was not impressed. He continued to publish without asking for prior permission. In 1781, therefore, the Church Council decided to conduct a special investigation of Hahn’s teachings (Lehrzuchtverfahren). Excerpts of his writings were collected, compiled, and commented on by a special investigator; and, in a special trial Hahn – who was, after all, known to enjoy the protection of the duke – was thoroughly examined. As a result, the Church Council asked Hahn to withdraw his books and to submit the copies still in his possession to the church authorities; he was asked to recant and not to repeat certain theological views; to discontinue the religious assemblies in his parish and to stop visiting religious assemblies in other locations; and, finally, he was asked to submit all future writings for prepublication censorship. While agreeing to all of these stipulations, Hahn was nevertheless very unhappy about the way in which he had been disciplined. Even more than before, he concentrated on projects in his workshop, his mechanische Werkstatt, trying to improve an astronomical clock that he had built and a calculating machine that he had invented.6 The duke continued to

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support him. When the two met in 1783, they discussed questions of Bible criticism, enlightened theology, and atheism. Although the church authorities remained suspicious of Hahn, the nonconformist theologian, the Catholic duke seems to have cherished the exchange with a nonconformist mind. In 1782, a year before this conversation, Oetinger had died; Hahn died in 1790, at fifty-one years of age. In the near decade between these two dates, the rise of separatism in Württemberg continued. While the Church Council was eager to discipline and intimidate nonconformist theologians such as Hahn, the new movement was led by lay theologians, common people, farmhands, and artisans, who spoke out as if they were prophets. Their theme was clear and simple: Christ’s return and the day of the Last Judgment is rapidly approaching. They argued that official enlightened theology betrayed God’s true word; that those who were still true believers should try to save their souls because God’s punishment would be terrible; above all, that they should resist the false teachings and practices of the enlightened church authorities.7 One of these new prophets was Johann Michael (‘Michele’) Hahn, a farmhand who claimed to have been reborn when he was twenty years of age and who began working as an itinerant preacher in the early 1780s, in the area south of Stuttgart. Within a short time, Michele Hahn, as he was commonly called, became well known. Sometimes several hundred people listened to his sermons. In 1785 the Church Council examined him and severely reprimanded him, in what proved to be just the first in a series of special investigations and warnings. After some years, Michele Hahn became more cautious. Thus, in 1794 when Karl Eugen’s widow, Franziska von Hohenheim, invited him to live on her estate, he accepted, perhaps also because his health had deteriorated. He began to write dozens of theological treatises and hymns in which he expressed his message. Church authorities were unable to silence him, and the number of his followers grew: Even though none of Michele Hahn’s writings was published before 1819, they all were circulated as hand-written manuscripts, thus escaping official censorship and reaching ever greater numbers of people. Furthermore, the course of political events since 1789 seemed to confirm the view that the end of times was near.8 Another prophet was a simple weaver named Johann Georg Rapp. Following the example of Michele Hahn, he started to preach when he was eighteen, in 1785. Shortly thereafter he called his followers to assemble one Sunday morning, during the time of the official church service. For the Church Council, this was a declaration of war. Although Rapp’s fol-

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lowers were paying taxes, they refused to take an oath; although they were working hard and leading exemplary lives, they stayed away from church and celebrated the Lord’s Supper among themselves; and now they had dared to meet during official services. As early as 1791 the church authorities asked the political authorities to exile Rapp and his followers. Karl Eugen disagreed. One could not say that Rapp and his people were disobedient, wicked citizens, the duke explained, nor could one prove that their religious principles contained elements dangerous for the state or the ruler. Rather than punishing them, he submitted, one should treat them mildly and with due consideration. For the experienced Duke Karl Eugen, grown old and wise, the Pietistenreskript of 1743 was outdated and should not be applied. A year later the duke died, and Rapp’s ordeal continued. In 1794 Rapp and his followers were asked to join the military. Just as they rejected taking an oath, so they also refused to bear arms. The new administration, led by Karl Eugen’s younger brother Ludwig Friedrich, acted quickly. As long as Rapp’s people had differed only in certain religious views, the duke’s officials argued, there had been no cause to apply the laws strictly. After all, the government proclaimed, religious tolerance was one of the liberties that citizens of Württemberg should enjoy. But now that particular religious opinions were affecting the way certain people understood their duties as citizens and were causing them to refuse to defend the fatherland, tolerance could no longer be extended, and stronger measures were necessary. Afraid that they might be put into prison, some of Rapp’s followers emigrated immediately. A decade later, after years of harassment, Rapp would do the same.9 In 1797 Duke Friedrich II, a nephew of Karl Eugen and the first Protestant ruler since 1733, came to power in Württemberg. Like his uncle, Friedrich II was ambitious. He wanted to modernize the state and to improve the economy. The more things he changed and the more he achieved, however, the more separatist circles concluded that their apocalyptical views were in full accord with what they called the ‘signs of the times’ (Zeitzeichen). In 1801 a group of separatists, believing that Christ was about to return and would do so in Jerusalem, tried to migrate to Palestine. They got as far as Vienna before they were sent back to Württemberg. A thorough investigation revealed that this group had been inspired by a book written by one Johann Jakob Friederich, a young pastor who had served as Philipp Matthäus Hahn’s assistant in Echterdingen and who argued that before Christ’s return, during the phase of the last rage of the Antichrist, God’s true children would find a place of refuge

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in the valleys and caves of the Holy Land.10 Like Philipp Matthäus Hahn, Friederich was brought to trial; like Hahn he promised to submit future writings to the censor before their publication.11 In 1803 this episode, as well as the continued struggle with Rapp and his followers, prompted Friedrich II to decide that a new law concerning separatism was needed. First, he asked the various agencies of his government for advice. The Church Council argued that separatists were no longer a real danger: Although they should have no right to assemble during church services, their views were so absurd (‘so sehr gegen den gemeinen Menschen Verstand’) that one could expect that only few people would be taken in by what they were saying.12 The political administration came to a somewhat different conclusion: School attendance should be required, and baptism, but not confirmation, should be obligatory. The Privy Council (Geheime Rat) stressed that, in any case, tolerance was better than the use of force. As long as people like Rapp observed the public order, which included paying taxes, and as long as their children attended school, they should be allowed to regulate matters like baptism, the Eucharist, and confirmation for themselves. Duke Friedrich, who had been promoted to Elector in 1803, could not concur. In his view, baptism was a public act, and girls over eighteen and boys over twenty should be sent to confirmation even against the will of their parents. The Separatistengesetz (Law Concerning Separatists) of 1803 replaced the Pietistenreskript of 1743. Let me summarize the main points of this law. As long as separatists behaved like obedient citizens, their special religious views should be tolerated. There should be, however, a number of restrictions. In their assemblies, separatists should not be allowed to discuss political matters. Meetings should never include more than fifteen persons, with no more than one-third coming from other localities. Assemblies should be held in the houses of respected citizens, not in open fields or at night, and never during the time of church services. Local pastors should be allowed to inspect what was going on. The taking of an oath would not be enforced, but those who refused would not qualify for public office. Separatists would be obliged to pay church taxes, and baptism and confirmation, both public acts, would be required. In sum: The Separatistengesetz of 1803 was rather complicated and difficult to enforce. Although the new law allowed more religious freedom than the Pietistenreskript of 1743, in 1803 political supervision had become more rigid. Besides, political and religious matters had not been clearly defined. Some religious practices were claimed to be state matters, others not. Therefore, it remained also unclear how much freedom of

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conscience people had. In the concluding paragraph of the new law, Friedrich remarked that, with this piece of legislation, his patience had been exhausted. Certainly this remark did not help to convince those who had been suspicious of his good intentions all along. There are some consequences worth mentioning. Rapp and his followers decided to emigrate to America. They left Württemberg in 1804. Other separatist groups refused to obey the new law and were put into prison. Between 1803 and 1815 Württemberg prisons were filled with dozens of people whose only offence had been the demand for complete religious freedom from the state church. Other separatists pretended to obey the new law, only to continue their activities in secret.13 In 1808 and 1809 Friedrich, who with Napoleon’s help had become king of Württemberg, passed new laws against separatism. One of these new laws stated that the children of obstinate separatists should be taken away and sent to an orphanage in Ludwigsburg where they would be educated and trained to become ‘reasonable people’ (vernünftige Menschen).14 In 1809 a memorandum sent to Friedrich by some of his councillors went even further. Separatists should no longer be punished by imprisonment, the authors argued. Some should be sent to mental institutions, others should be forced to do hard physical labour; still others should be forced to emigrate. Even though this proposal was not carried through, in 1809 devout Württemberg Protestants who did not want to be part of a state church governed in the spirit of enlightened despotism had only few alternatives: going to prison, emigrating, or publicly disavowing what they continued to believe in private. There are, as we know, various preconditions for religious tolerance. One of them is territorial autonomy. In this context, a case in Friedrich’s Württemberg is worth noting. In 1802 the Moravian Church applied to the Württemberg government for permission to establish a settlement in Württemberg territory. In its memorandum on the request, the Privy Council explained that the followers of Zinzendorf had long ceased to be the cause of controversy. Rather, they were known as quiet and useful people, famous for their diligence in trade, in the arts, and in commerce.15 The members of the Church Council took a different position. The Moravians formed a church within the church, they explained, yet they lacked clear dogmatic teachings. Furthermore, the elders in Moravian communities regulated not only matters of religion but also all other matters. Thus they also formed a state within the state. A Protestant ruler like Friedrich should be aware that important affairs in such settlements would be directed by Moravian agencies outside of his territory. In view of

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the recent surge of separatism, a Moravian settlement in Württemberg might serve as an additional impulse for many Pietists to leave the church. Therefore, a Moravian settlement in Württemberg should not be established. Should the king decide otherwise, there should be safeguards so that this new settlement would not become a safe haven for separatists of all kinds and so that the rights and privileges of the Protestant church were not harmed in any way.16 With Friedrich, economic arguments seem to have prevailed. In 1806 the Moravians received a charter that granted religious freedom and contained economic privileges like freedom of trade and the right to establish a pharmacy and all kinds of factories, even a brewery and a distillery (somewhat of an irony in light of their attitudes towards alcohol). Moravian schools were to be under the supervision of the state. A major limitation for the project was the location of the new settlement. It was to be established in a remote area of the Württemberg Black Forest near the border with Baden. Through marginal location on marginal land, Königsfeld, as the new settlement was called, was for all practical purposes isolated from the rest of Württemberg. When border questions were being settled between Württemberg and Baden in 1810, King Friedrich used the occasion to cede Königsfeld to Baden. But there is a continuation of this story within Württemberg. One of the major problems with which Friedrich’s successor, King Wilhelm, was confronted in 1816 and 1817, was mass emigration. Threatened by starvation, more than 25,000 people left Württemberg within less than a year. They were led by separatists who guided the convoys southeast, in the direction of the Crimea, which they had chosen as a destination not only because Czar Alexander had offered excellent conditions for new settlers, but also because they considered this area a suitable place for temporary refuge en route to Palestine. Considering their motives, one should speak, more correctly, of an exodus, not of an emigration.17 In King Wilhelm’s view, some of his hardest-working Untertanen (subjects) were leaving the country. In face of this situation, the king and his government granted a safe haven within Württemberg to the Württemberg Pietists and separatists. This was the new settlement of Korntal near Stuttgart.18 The charter given to Korntal in 1819 was almost identical to that of Königsfeld. The pressure generated by the mass exodus may help to explain why King Wilhelm abandoned the principle of marginal location and marginal land. Within a short time, Korntal was fully populated, and overflowing, with all those separatists who had gone into what may be called ‘inner

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emigration’ since the Separatistengesetz of 1803. The leaders of Korntal asked King Wilhelm for permission to establish a second colony independent of the state church within Württemberg. In the meantime, emigration had subsided, and so had the pressure on the government to act. Yes, the king answered, the separatists should go ahead and establish another settlement. But the land they were given was located in the Catholic part of the kingdom south of the Danube, a region that Württemberg had only recently acquired. It was marshy land that needed to be drained and cultivated. The conditions for Wilhelmsdorf, as the new settlement was called, could have hardly been worse: isolation from Altwürttemberg, also from Korntal – a marginal location on marginal land. Within the first two years, more than half of the pious settlers who had moved to Wilhelmsdorf in 1824 had died. Several decades passed before the settlement started to prosper. To sum up: At least in the case of Württemberg, the progress of Enlightenment cannot and should not be equated with a steady progress of religious tolerance. Enlightened despotism failed, it seems, to do full justice to those who demanded religious liberty. There are variations in the attitude of the political and the ecclesiastical branches of the Württemberg government: Whenever pastors came forth with nonconformist theological views, church authorities showed little inclination to tolerate them. Whenever law and order were concerned, political authorities were not ready to respect the views and practices of sectarian groups, and matters such as baptism and confirmation were considered to be part of the public order. Perhaps, in all of this the dukes played the most interesting role. Although the Catholic Duke Karl Eugen successfully insisted on more religious tolerance, his Protestant successor Friedrich II expected more obedience and enforced more discipline in religious as well as secular matters. Religious autonomy granted to new settlements like Königsfeld, Korntal, and Wilhelmsdorf was the result, not of a benign ruler’s belief in tolerance, but of economic opportunism and of pressure from below. Finally, there is also reason to be cautious before praising too much the tolerance shown by Bilfinger when he formulated the Pietistenreskript,19 or the tolerance demonstrated by Duke Karl Eugen when he supported Philipp Matthäus Hahn and Johann Christoph Oetinger. During the late 1730s, when Bilfinger decided to officially recognize the conventicles of Pietists, the Estates of Württemberg, with the support of Württemberg Pietists, also imprisoned, brought to trial, and executed Duke Karl Alexander’s most influential adviser, ‘Jud Süss’ Oppenheimer. On the other

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hand, during the 1770s and 1780s, when Duke Karl Eugen supported Pietistic inventors and thus displayed a de facto tolerance of nonconformist religious views, his policies nevertheless also brought the imprisonment of independent minds like Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and drove that most famous of late eighteenth-century Württembergers, Friedrich Schiller, into exile. As regards Pietists and separatists, the lack of tolerance that they experienced in late eighteenth-century Württemberg had an effect that those who oppressed them could hardly have foreseen: It confirmed their belief that the Antichrist was raging and that Christ’s return was imminent, but that, as God’s true children, they would be rewarded plentifully on the Day of the Last Judgment. One can only speculate whether a higher degree of tolerance might have served to corrupt their convictions and to disintegrate their movement.20

Notes 1 On the Pietistenreskript and for the following aspects, in particular for the discussion of Johann Jakob Moser, see Hartmut Lehmann, Pietismus und weltliche Ordnung in Württemberg vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1969), esp. 66–134. 2 On Bengel’s view of Zinzendorf, and the relationship between Württemberg Pietism and the Moravians in the 1730s and 1740s, see Gottfried Mälzer, Bengel und Zinzendorf: Zur Biographie und Theologie Johann Albrecht Bengels (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1968). 3 Quoted from Lehmann, Pietismus, 93. 4 Walter Grube, Der Stuttgarter Landtag 1457–1957: Von den Landständen zum demokratischen Parlament (Stuttgart: Klett, 1957), 427–49; Reinhard Rürup, Johann Jakob Moser: Pietismus und Reform (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1965), 153–205; Mack Walker, Johann Jacob Moser and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 245–56. 5 For this episode, see Walter Stäbler, Pietistische Theologie im Verhör: Das System Philipp Matthäus Hahns und seine Beanstandung durch das württembergische Konsistorium (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1992), 45 and passim. 6 There is fascinating material on this in the extensive diaries of Hahn, which were published a few years ago. This is a source that has hardly been tapped. See Martin Brecht and Rudolf F. Paulus (eds.), Philipp Matthäus Hahn (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1979, 1983), vol. 1, Die Kornwestheimer Tagebücher 1772–1777, and vol. 2, Die Echterdinger Tagebücher 1780–1790. 7 Lehmann, Pietismus, 135–46. See also Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Der politische

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Widerstand gegen die Einführung des neuen Gesangbuchs von 1791 in Württemberg,’ Blätter für württembergische Kirchengeschichte 66/67 (1966/67), 247–63. Johann Michael Hahn’s theological views are explained in Joachim Trautwein, Die Theosophie Johann Michael Hahns und ihre Quellen (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1969). There is an extensive literature on the various settlements established by Rapp after his emigration to the United States: on the villages Harmony, New Harmony, and Economy. Rapp’s early years in Württemberg have been less well studied. Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Pietistic Millenarianism in Late Eighteenth-Century Württemberg,’ in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 327–38. Like Johann Michael Hahn, Friederich continued to produce theological treatises, and as in the case of Hahn, these were circulated widely among Württemberg Pietists as handwritten manuscripts, thus escaping the censor. In fact, as ‘underground literature’ these pieces possessed much more authority among the faithful than any published book ever would have commanded. Lehmann, Pietismus, 156–8. Johann Jakob Friederich and his followers belonged to this group, for example. Lehmann, Pietismus, 160. Memorandum of 24 July 1802, Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, E 31–32, Bü. 367/840. Memorandum of 2 Aug. 1805, Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart, A 26, Bü. 461. Andreas Gestrich, ‘Pietistische Russlandauswanderung im 19. Jahrhundert: Die Walddorfer Harmonie,’ in Andreas Gestrich, Harald Kleinschmidt, and Holger Sonnabend (eds.), Historische Wanderungsbewegungen, ed. (Münster and Hamburg: Lit-Verlag, 1991), 109–25. Friederich became Korntal’s first pastor. Johann Michael Hahn was elected to be Korntal’s first mayor, but he died before moving to Korntal and assuming office. A biography of Bilfinger is a desideratum. It is not known, as of now, by whom his thinking was influenced, and whether he knew, for example, the works of Pierre Bayle. By 1836, the date given by Bengel for Christ’s return, even in Korntal and Wilhelmsdorf, eschatological and religious enthusiasm and fervour had sub-

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sided. In 1836 Korntal pastor Sixt Karl Kapff published a small book, Die Zukunft des Herrn (Stuttgart: Müller) in which he explained that Christ’s return was imminent, although the exact date was up to God’s will, and one could not, nor should one, know this date in advance. For more details see Michael Kannenberg, Verschleierte Uhrtafeln. Endzeiterwartungen im württembergischen Pietismus zwischen 1818 und 1848 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007).

six

Jewish Emancipation in France in the Eighteenth Century FRANCES MALINO

Emancipation: Tolerance or Intolerance? On the eve of the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Adrien Du Port, deputy of the nobility of Paris, arose and demanded full rights for the Jews. He argued that the principle of freedom of religion permitted no distinction in the political rights of citizens because of their faith: ‘I believe,’ he continued, ‘that the Jews cannot be the only ones excepted from the enjoyment of these rights when pagans, Turks, Muslims, even Chinese, in a word men of all religions, are admitted.’1 Only one voice disagreed, as the deputies (many of whom might have objected had they not already emigrated) tacitly agreed that to speak against Du Port’s proposal was to fight the constitution itself. Twenty-five months of agitation, discussion, debate, and adjournment had come to an end. Jewish emancipation was complete. The decree of 27 September 1791 became law on 13 November. For almost two centuries afterwards the Jews of France remained deeply committed to the revolution of 1789 – to its principles of individual rights and constitutional guarantees – for they believed this revolution had freed them from the oppression and discrimination of the ancien régime. Indeed, nearly a century later, with the Dreyfus affair polarizing the French community and threatening the foundations on which Jewish emancipation and citizenship rested, the historian Léon Kahn reiterated this commitment in his magisterial study of the Jews of Paris. Affirming the glorious if still fragile accomplishments of the revolution and reminding his readers that the Jews too were ‘true sons of

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France,’ Kahn expressed his generation’s trust in the future: ‘All that the Revolution has given to France of beauty, of grandeur, of generous humanity ... all today is open to question in attitudes which the future will not fail to tarnish and which the people have already stigmatized.’2 What Kahn would never have predicted, however, was the tarnishing of the revolution, not by those who sought to deny the Jews their citizenship, but rather by the Jews themselves. And he certainly would have failed to comprehend the arguments, expressed by some of the most eloquent of France’s post–Second World War generation: that the true legacy of the revolution lay in having made the Jews hostages to a freedom that restricted them and to a universalism that particularized them; and that those revolutionaries who supported emancipation were motivated not by the desire to give the Jews rights but rather by the wish to resolve the Jewish question once and for all by destroying the Jewish communities, their laws, and their institutions – in short, by annihilating Jewish identity. ‘In hardly forcing a caricature,’ Pierre Birnbaum writes, ‘one might almost say that the official image of Abbé Grégoire, the emancipator, and that of Drumont, the fierce antisemite, are almost identical, only the solutions which they advocate differ. The first wishes to regenerate the Jews in order finally to expose the Man in them while the second intends simply to liquidate them physically or to expel them from a French society fundamentally Christian.’3 Both the legacy of Vichy France and the reclaiming by Jews of their identity as a nation clearly inform this defiant rejection of old friends and time-honoured events. But I would argue that this contemporary interpretation of Jewish emancipation is problematic, not only because it reflects post-Holocaust hindsight and Zionist teleology, but also because it removes the elements of time and process from its interpretation; it treats a generation of history as a moment in time, conflating ideas, ideals, and events, and analysing them as if they had happened simultaneously. Jewish emancipation did indeed occur later than any of its eighteenthcentury supporters had anticipated. By the time it was promulgated, moreover, there had been an essential shift away from the patriotism and virtues of the Jews themselves as justification for the abstract principles of ideological consistency and constitutional integrity. Nevertheless, Jewish emancipation demanded neither a particular regeneration of the Jews nor the abandonment of their Judaism. ‘The civil laws of the Jews are identified with their religious laws,’ Louis Pierre Joseph Prugnon clarified on

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behalf of the National Assembly, the day after the vote on Jewish emancipation. ‘It is not our intention to require that they renounce their religion.’4 Contemporary interpretations, however, cannot and should not be too easily dismissed. For the terms of Jewish emancipation established in 1791 did not last for long. They were transformed during a second round of emancipation debate, which took place unofficially during the Directory and officially between 1806 and 1808. This time, paradoxically, the discourse was not one of revolutionary universalism and religious freedom but rather of ancien-régime tolerance appropriated by a generation whose experience of the Terror had left them fearful of the true nature of man. I shall explore this discourse of tolerance and suggest briefly how it differed from the one that produced the 1791 emancipation decree.

Tolerance in the Ancien Régime: The Jewish Question What, in fact, was the official attitude towards the Jews on the eve of the Revolution? Was their full inclusion in the body politic merely a matter of time? If so, on what terms were they to be included? And if not, given a climate of enlightenment and increased tolerance, what were the grounds for excluding them? For answers to these questions, it is useful to broaden our investigation and focus not merely on the Jews but also on the Protestants and in particular on the debates surrounding the socalled Edict of Toleration, that is, the 1787 Édit du Roi, concernant ceux qui ne font pas profession de la religion Catholique. Neither Protestants nor Jews experienced religious toleration in eighteenth-century France. But, as the anonymous author of this poem explained, Jews enjoyed more rights than non-Catholic Christians: I know that your lot in life could be sweeter And that even the Jews are better treated than you; The temples that one permits them to erect in great number, Recall for them at least some shadow of their Zion.5

Well, this was not exactly the case. The poet could hardly have done justice to the whole picture which, in true ancien-régime fashion, was both more complicated and less uniform. Simply put, where Calvinists, or Huguenots, were most numerous and most persecuted, a minority of Jews (the Sephardim of Bordeaux and Bayonne) enjoyed significant

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privileges. But where Lutherans found protection and privileges, a majority of Jews (the Ashkenazim of eastern France) experienced humiliating oppression; Even these oppressed Jews, however, in contrast to the Calvinists, enjoyed the right to be born, marry, and die faithful to their religion. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, French Calvinists had no legal existence. Many had converted to Catholicism after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes and were leading lives of religious subterfuge. Others were clinging to their Calvinism by tenaciously protecting a Protestant ‘spirit’ stripped of theological connotations. For the Catholic Church, the existence of the new converts created distinctions whose only justification appeared to be confusion. Bien convertis were somehow to be separated from mal convertis, and bons catholiques from méchants catholiques, and lists were to be compiled of nouveaux convertis non convertis. The mid-eighteenth century saw a revival of Calvinism throughout southern France. Pastors began to preach openly, nouveaux convertis were slowly won back to their former faith, and the regency for the young Louis XV showed a mixture of indifference and tolerance. None of this changed the fact, however, that, as Protestants, nouveaux convertis had no civil rights. Indeed, as late as 1782, Catholic parishes were registering as bastards children born of suspected practising Protestants. Ethnically, theologically, and geographically distinct from Calvinists, the Lutherans of eastern France were spared the rigours of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. On the contrary, protected and guaranteed in their religious freedom by the Treaties of Westphalia, they remained organized in their consistories and continued to supervise their churches and schools. But these protections did not prevent Lutherans from facing certain restrictions in their daily lives, and consequently, conscious of their minority status, they fought with determination to protect their privileges. Their efforts met with success, even during the revolutionary years. In contrast to the Protestants who comprised over 2 per cent of the population, the Jews formed a tiny minority in France – perhaps two in one thousand by the end of the eighteenth century. But numbers alone are deceptive, for Jews did not live divided and dispersed throughout the land but rather in officially recognized autonomous communities in southwestern and eastern France. Within these communities, they established charitable institutions; elected governing bodies; defined the curriculum of their schools; registered their births, marriages, and deaths; and adjudicated cases in their own courts. Punishment of recalcitrant

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members of the community was left to the rabbis and syndics (lay leaders), and only rarely were local authorities called on to intervene in Jewish matters. In spite of the similarity of the internal dynamics of their several communities, however, the daily lives of the Jews differed radically from one community to another. The most striking differences were those that distinguished the Sephardim, whose culture and religious traditions testified to an Iberian past, from the Ashkenazim, whose centuries of cultural and linguistic development took place within small German towns and villages. The historical circumstances under which the Sephardim and Ashkenazim had entered France and settled there served only to exaggerate these differences. Debates by and on behalf of Jews and Protestants, as well as searing events illustrating the vulnerability of both, charged the climate during the last years of the ancien régime. Millenarians, rationalists, and humanitarians expressed a common theme. Their motivations might differ and their goals compete, but they all agreed that France must acknowledge its non-Catholics and grant them basic human rights. Many welcomed the edict of 1787 as an appropriate beginning; most assumed that it included the Jews. So, too, it appears, did its author, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes who, a year earlier, in his Second mémoire sur le mariage des Protestans, clearly stated the inclusivity of his position: ‘The law which we shall promulgate must not be for Calvinists alone, it must include all those who are unable to be married in the Church, those whose religion prevents them from baptising their children and all those to whom one does not give an ecclesiastical burial.’6 The text of the edict gave no indication that Malesherbes had changed his views. On the contrary, it explicitly stated that it included all non-Christians. What in fact did the edict grant the non-Catholics of the kingdom? It reaffirmed their freedom of conscience; granted them the rights to marry, bury their dead, and bequeath their estates outside the authority of the Catholic Church; and permitted them to practise previously forbidden crafts and trades. Public worship, however, was still prohibited, and pastors were denied any official status. Significant was Article 3 of the edict: ‘Let it be understood that those who profess a religion different from the Catholic religion may neither view themselves as forming in our kingdom a group, community or particular society nor may they present collectively any demand, give any procuration, take any deliberation, make any acquisition or any other act whatsoever.’7

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Undoubtedly this article was a reaction to the position of the Huguenots during the sixteenth century; under no circumstances was a political dualism to be recreated. It also reflected, however, the significant changes occurring in eighteenth-century France. But if the government was adamantly against recreating an autonomous religious body, it was also not yet willing to infringe on existing ones. Thus Article 3 expressly forbade the regrouping of the Protestant community, but Article 37 expressly reconfirmed the separate privileges and rights enjoyed by the Lutherans and, by implication, the Jews. Immediately after its promulgation and well before any parlements formally registered it, the edict caused a stir among the Jews in France. Did the edict, as its title seemed to imply, concern all those who did not practise Catholicism, or was it in fact limited to Protestants? ‘The Jews never doubted,’ the Ashkenazic leader Berr Isaac Berr proclaimed, ‘that this law not only augured for them the end of their misfortune, but also that it would bring about in them a striking and considerable revolution.’8 The provincial assembly of Lorraine shared Berr’s interpretation of the edict, if not the optimism of his prediction. There was good reason then for the Jews to rejoice along with the Calvinists. For the first time, they believed themselves free to practise crafts and professions formerly prohibited to them on account of their religion. For those Jews who lived outside of the established communities of the east and southwest, moreover, the newly created registries provided a legal status. Only the Sephardim expressed some concern that the edict might limit their privileges. But even they welcomed the opportunity to enter more fully into the economic life of the kingdom. On 29 January 1788, the Parlement of Paris registered the edict. Less than two months later, however, the Parlement of Metz informed the king that it could not and would not do so, explaining that Metz would thereby become ‘a tribe of Jews.’ Only after the king assured the Parlement that no new rights had been granted to the Jews did it finally register the edict, with an addendum that the position of the Jews of Metz remained unchanged. In a style awkward yet moving, the Ashkenazic leadership bemoaned this exclusion of the Jews: The law is general, all non-Catholic religions, all sects which wish to establish themselves in the kingdom are granted civil status, and the Jew! child born in France, attached to King and Prince. The Jew, man like all others,

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must not only not profit from this generous law, but must become even more degraded by this same law which in eliminating forever intolerance towards foreigners, continues it especially and only towards the Jew.9

Ironically, as a result of the edict of 1787, the status of the Jews of France, at least of those residing in Metz, had become less rather than more secure. Pierre-Louis Roederer, conseiller in the Parlement of Metz, would have us believe that immediately after the promulgation of the 1787 edict, the king complimented Malesherbes for his success and then said: ‘You have made yourself a Protestant; now I shall make you a Jew: Occupy yourself with the condition of the Jews.’10 The king most certainly instructed his minister to turn his attention to the Jews, and Malesherbes complied with his usual energy and concentration. But Roederer telescoped the events in his recollections of more than a decade later. For Malesherbes did not take up the question of the Jews until the early spring of 1788, on the very day the Parlement of Metz registered the edict and, along with it, the crown’s tacit approval of the exclusion of the Jews. Malesherbes left few sources untapped in his new task. He turned to his friends Pierre-Louis de Lacretelle and Pierre-Louis Roederer; to the Jews of the southwest, the east, and Paris; to police inspectors; and to ministers, both in France and abroad. He gathered information concerning the laws and customs of the Jews as well as reports – both solicited and unsolicited – from their friends and their enemies. He read the history of the Jews and charted their settlements. He obtained a map of Alsace with the major routes and towns, all in the search for an answer to one consuming question: Could and would the Jews of France abandon their exclusiveness and particularity in return for the rights of Frenchmen? In other words, were the Jews really comparable to the Protestants – who distinguished themselves from the majority of Frenchmen only in matters of faith – or were they a permanently separate and potentially dangerous people? The more Malesherbes probed, interviewed, and pondered, the less confident he became of the answer. For one thing, he found a disconcerting contrast between the views of his two close advisers Lacretelle and Roederer. Lacratelle had actually changed his position. Where earlier he had held out the hope that once relieved of their oppression the Jews would convert to Catholicism, he now envisioned a future in which the ‘vices’ of the Jews, but not their religion, would be permanently eradicated. And Roederer, who had earlier championed inclusive policies for Jews, was concerned that the changes

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citizenship would demand of the Jews might destroy their ‘virtues.’ Furthermore, neither man thought that the Jews should be allowed to live according to their own laws, constitution, customs, and, in the case of the Ashkenazim, language. They assumed, Roederer with some misgivings, that the price of civil rights for the Jews was their abandonment of characteristics that set them apart from their neighbours; in this, Malesherbes was even more adamant. Roederer and Lacretelle both believed, moreover, that the Jews could and would accept these changes. Malesherbes was not so sure. But what about the Jews themselves? What were their thoughts about emancipation and the prospect of full-fledged citizenship? The positions of the Ashkenazim differed substantially from those of the Sephardim, whether the subject was the need to educate and prepare the Jews for citizenship, or the degree to which Jewish traditions and laws ought to be abandoned in exchange for full civil rights. The Ashkenazim, for example, were determined to preserve Jewish law and tradition, even if it meant giving up full civil rights. Neither group, however, supported the idea of abolishing the corporate autonomy of the Jewish communities. Malesherbes learned of these positions in consultations with Jewish readers and friends, such as Dupré de Saint-Maur, past Intendant of Bordeaux and friend to many of the Spehardic négociants, Sephardic deputies from Bordeaux and Bayonne, and the Ashkenazic deputies, Berr Isaac Berr of Nancy and Cerf Berr, of Strasbourg. If Malesherbes doubted the accuracy of the distinctions which the Sephardim drew between themselves and the Ashkenazic Jews of eastern France, he had the opportunity to observe them first hand. For when he questioned Moyse Gradis, the Sephardic spokesman, and Cerf Berr, the syndic of the Jews of Alsace, about the possibility of Jews dining with non-Jews, Gradis responded in the affirmative – that the Jews could and should dine with Christians – while Cerf Berr argued vehemently against this position. ‘The King told me he was making me a Jew,’ Malesherbes complained to Roederer, ‘and now Cerf Berr wishes to make me a Jansenist: I no longer know whom to listen to!’11 In fact, confusion and conflicting opinions seem to have been the norm, whether their origin was Jewish or non-Jewish. For every defence of the Jews that he received, Malesherbes also received words of warning and proposals for containing the Jewish population. One such came from the fabulist Théophile-Conrad Pfeffel, whose memoir questioned whether granting the Jews citizenship would be useful to the state. Absolutely not, Pfeffel concluded, for the Jews will always remain foreigners,

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united with Jews around the world in a religious fraternity. They cannot be changed, should no longer be permitted entry into the kingdom, and should be restricted if already there. Pfeffel, himself a Protestant, gave voice to the fears and prejudices endemic in the Alsatian population. Malesherbes must have been overwhelmed. Not only the complexity of the task but also the diversity of views conveyed to him made difficult his promise to provide the king with a memorandum on the civil status of the Jews. At any rate, it seems that he never finished his report. In its absence, what can we conclude? Would Malesherbes have advised the crown to extend the provisions of the 1787 edict to the Jews of France? Was he willing in 1788, as I believe he was in 1787, to include the Jews in the granting of civil rights to non-Catholics? The answers to these questions cannot be definitive, but evidence, both private and public, suggests that to both questions, Malesherbes would have answered ‘No!’ In his private musings Malesherbes dwelt on the isolation of the Jews, their determination to remain separate from all others, and the potential danger they represented to the state. At present, he noted, the Jews are not at all comparable to the Protestants; they are hated because of the ‘crime’ of their ancestors and their exclusive commitment to commerce. To be sure, the Protestants had once also inspired hatred. The difference, however, lay in whether the Jews would ever become useful citizens. In correspondence with his friend Mulinen, treasurer of the Republic of Berne, Malesherbes expanded on these musings. He agreed with his friend that it was good to expel the Jews where they were a small part of the population. But he went on to note that it would be impossible to do so in countries where they were numerous and essential, as in Poland, or in countries such as France where they were not necessary to the economy but had lived for centuries. Then, turning away from these ‘moral considerations’ in favour of toleration, he returned to the problems posed by the Jews. Citing the prophet Jeremiah, he called attention to the many ways in which Jewish law and custom prevented its adherents from eating and drinking with the French, or from engaging in salutary occupations such as agriculture, or ultimately, from escaping their condition as an imperium in imperiis. Malesherbes went on to suggest that these barriers actually amounted to a kind of ‘scandalous corruption.’ ‘I believe,’ he confided to Mulinen, ‘that those among the Jews who know well the secret of the State [agriculture], will have nothing to do with it unless one abandons to them a country in which they alone will be the proprietors and cultivators. And

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I believe that if they have such property and maintain themselves there in force, this nation will become even more dangerous.’12 Acknowledging that so far he had only a ‘superficial’ understanding of the Jews, Malesherbes explained why. Those who controlled the nation, the rich or the religious, appeared to him ‘deceitful’ and ‘cunning.’ In the end, Malesherbes thought better of sending his letter to Mulinen. Publicly, moreover, he remained committed to improving the lot of the Jews. Indeed, Dupré de Saint-Maur confided in him in July 1788, that, in spite of the current atmosphere, he continued to share Malesherbes’s dreams: To succeed, what is necessary is either more calm among the people or more nerve in the government. Principles of tolerance, moreover, which up until the present have only received their full expressions in the new world, are perhaps not made for the old. Although we live in the latter, there still remains some pleasure at least in dreaming of the good that we cannot accomplish; and on this point my imagination will always deem itself doubly fortunate to travel with yours, if only in the land of illusions.13

As these remarks demonstrate, the cause of the Jews was losing ground and Malesherbes’s failure to produce his memorandum reflects that situation. No doubt, more compelling events had intervened to command attention, but the question remains, whether Malesherbes’s profound reservations and habitual indecisiveness played a role in weakening enthusiasm for reform. The ancien régime seems simply to have put the problem of the Jews aside. But many people continued to believe that Malesherbes would soon make public a memorandum concerning the Jews. Indeed, nearly a quarter century later, Berr Isaac Berr, exhibiting an extraordinary case of amnesia, suggested to his co-religionists of France that they honour the memory of the ‘virtuous’ Malesherbes, who had been the first to obtain civil liberty for the Jews.14 If the intensive months of examination and gathering of information produced nothing concrete, they had succeeded in publicly linking the discourse of tolerance to the granting of civil rights to the Jews, especially now that these rights no longer depended on adherence to the Catholic faith. Journalists, essayists, theologians, and lawyers entered the debates, thus extending the locus of discussion well beyond official government circles. ‘In France it is not at all religion, but origin which determines that one is French,’ the Parisian lawyer Jaladon argued in 1784. ‘Atheist

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or deist, Jew or Catholic, Protestant or Muslim – what does it matter? If one is born in France of a French mother and French father ... then one is French and enjoys all the rights of a citizen.’15 On 25 August 1785 the Metz Royal Academy took up the debate, when it announced the subject for its 1787 essay competition: ‘Are there means to render the Jews more useful and happier in France?’ That this academy chose to investigate the condition of the Jews could have been anticipated by its previous year’s competition which dealt with the laws and opinions concerning bastards – in other words, children born of Protestant parents. That contest had produced outstanding entries. This time, however, the entries were found to be ‘mediocre.’ Roederer, who had specifically asked to judge the competition, lamented both privately and publicly, that the authors argued rather than demonstrated, rejected careful analysis in favour of ire and satire, and were neither sufficiently well organized nor capable of addressing the prejudices of a wavering government. Extending the competition until the following year (1788), the Academy finally agreed to crown three ‘good’ works. None of the entries had adequately resolved the ‘multiplicity of doubts’ concerning the Jews – particularly those expressed by Voltaire, Rousseau, and Johann-David Michaelis. They nevertheless offer revealing insights. Valioud, secretary of the Agricultural Academy of Laon, defended the Jews against the charge of deicide, suggested that the insulting prayers on Good Friday be modified and advocated religious pluralism. After arguing in seventeen articles that granting the Jews freedom and security were the means to insure their usefulness and happiness, he concluded: ‘If we do not acknowledge miracles, then only the way we treat them will lead them little by little to convert.’16 Happiness and usefulness, therefore, were nothing more than means to the end of conversion. Paradoxically, the Abbé de la Lauze concluded otherwise: ‘Grant both the rich and the poor citizenship, and let them enjoy their property and their freedom in peace. To live subjected to the laws of the country one inhabits, to contribute to the taxes of the state in which one is domiciled without being a citizen, is to have no homeland. What! Is happiness ever the lot of a man who is a foreigner in the midst of the nation in which he was born!’17 The public, however, never heard mention of Valioud, the Abbé de la Lauze or the other contestants. For the Academy announced only the names of the three who had shared the palme – the Abbé Grégoire, curé of Embermenil; Thiéry, Protestant lawyer to the Parlement of Nancy; and

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the Polish Jew, Zalkind Hourwitz. All three advocated welcoming the Jews ‘as men’ into the French nation and demanded that the Jews resemble the French in dress, that they dwell alongside them instead of in Jewish quarters, and that they be relieved of collective guilt. These similarities aside, their essays, published and reviewed in the important Parisian journals, reveal subtle and profound differences in their positions. Both Grégoire and Thiéry considered Judaism inferior to Christianity and the Jews in need of ‘correction.’ Thiéry had more respect than Grégoire for the religious integrity of the Jews and more concern for their freedom to remain faithful to their traditions. But this came at a price. ‘Would the Jews be able to rule us?’ he asked. His answer was simple: They would not. Grégoire thought that traditional Judaism should be replaced by an ‘enlightened’ form of religion benign in its implications for wider French society and culture. Even so, he believed that Jews, as individuals, might need to be regulated in some way. One should never lose sight, he warned, of the character of the people one proposes to correct. Hourwitz, in contrast to both Thiéry and Grégoire, vehemently denied that the faith of the Jews stood in the way of full equality, that their ‘character’ required régénération, or that they needed to demonstrate their worth: ‘The means to make the Jews happy and useful? Here it is, cease to make them unhappy and useless, in giving them, or rather returning to them the rights of citizenship ... Have we such an abundance of time and enlightenment that we can prostitute them in the investigation of foolishness and barbarity?’18 Of the three Metz laureats, Hourwitz alone gave voice to the new ideal of citizenship – democratic, non-corporatist, and inclusive – that would reach fruition in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. ‘Tolerance!’ the Protestant deputy Rabut Saint-Etienne exclaimed amid the debates of August 1789. ‘I demand that it be proscribed and it will be, this unjust word which represents us only as citizens worthy of pity, as guilty ones whom one pardons.’19 It was also this ideal of citizenship, in contrast to the ones argued by Grégoire and Thiéry, that the Parisian revolutionaries embraced when they welcomed the Jews as active participants in the revolution – on the streets, in the cafés and clubs, and in the uniform of National Guardsmen. And when they prepared their memoranda and petitioned the Constituent Assembly in January and February 1790 on behalf of the Jews. Revolutionary ideals notwithstanding, the Assembly found it necessary to discuss and decide formally whether ‘non-Catholics’ could in fact be active citizens of France. During the debates, distinctions between Prot-

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estants and Jews were once again drawn. And once again, as with the 1787 edict, a decision concerning Jews was postponed. ‘It has just been established’ the Courrier de Gorsas announced sarcastically on 26 December 1789, ‘that on principle one cannot decide a question as important as that of the Jews.’20 For the next year and a half the old regime confronted the new each time the subject of citizenship for the Jews was raised. Not surprisingly, the concerns and reservations abundant in the discourse of tolerance found a receptive audience among those who sought to postpone indefinitely the granting of equal rights to the Jews. When, in 1806–8, Jewish emancipation was once again subject to debate and discussion, these same concerns and reservations reappeared to provide Napoleon justification for its partial, albeit ephemeral, curtailment. Now, more than two centuries later, the contingency of tolerance has effaced the intent of the emancipation of 1791 in the memory of Jews and non-Jews alike.21

Notes 1 Archives parlementaires, 27 Sept. 1791. This and all subsequent translations are mine (FM). 2 Léon Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris pendant la révolution (Paris: P. Ollendorf, 1898), Introduction. 3 Pierre Birnbaum, ‘Sur l’étatisation révolutionnaire L’abbé Grégoire et le destin de l’identité juive,’ Le Débat, no. 53 (Jan.–Feb. 1989), 162. 4 Archives parlementaires, 28 Sept. 1791. 5 Essai sur la tolérance des non-catholiques en France. Poème adressé à MM. les Députés des Trois Ordres, 1789, n.s. 6 Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Second Mémoire sur le mariage des Protestans (Londres, 1787). 7 L’édit de 1787, Article 3. 8 ‘Reflexion sur l’enregistrement de l’Édit des non-catholiques au parlement de Metz et Projets pour rendre les juifs plus utiles et plus heureux en France,’ Archives nationales, 29 AP 3. 9 Ibid. 10 Journal de Paris XXIV, (An VII [1798], 22 Frimaire). 11 Ibid. 12 Archives nationales, 154 APII 135. 13 Ibid. 14 Cited in Zosa Szajkowski, Jews and the French Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848 (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1970), 378–9.

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15 Jaladon’s arguments are cited in P. Hildenfinger, Documents sur les Juifs à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: actes inhumations et scellés (Paris: E. Champion, 1913), 39–43. 16 Bibliothèque de Metz, Ms. 1349. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Cited in Kahn, Les Juifs de Paris, 17–18. 20 Courrier de Gorsas, 26 Dec. 1789. 21 Subsequent to the writing of this chapter the following works have appeared. Frances Malino, A Jew in the French Revolution: The Life of Zalkind Hourwitz (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996); Ronald Schecter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Alyssa Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

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The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century Germany D AV I D S O R K I N

The scholarship on German Jewry in the eighteenth century has been so relentlessly teleological in its focus on the causes of emancipation, especially on apparently proximate causes such as Christian Wilhelm Dohm’s 1781 tract, On the Civic Amelioration of the Jews, that we know precious little about the discourse of toleration and intolerance throughout the eighteenth century. Here I would like to delineate some of the factors that might be considered in a fuller account. The discourse about Jews in the German states shifted in the course of the eighteenth century from a discussion of toleration to a discussion of rights (or, as it was later to be called, emancipation). This shift resulted from an interplay between the Jews’ situation and a culture in accelerated flux. Put differently, two major historical factors conditioned the discourse about the Jews: the terms of their resettlement in German lands and the changing nature of the German states, on the one side, and the reconstruction of Christianity and its relationship to the Enlightenment’s development and diffusion, on the other. In the discussion of toleration, secular and especially economic considerations were linked with theological perceptions. In the subsequent discussion of rights (beginning in the 1780s) that linkage was replaced by one between economic considerations and secular ideas of morality. First, a few remarks on the Jews’ political and demographic situation are in order. In the period during and after the Thirty Years War, a virtual resettlement of Jews in the German states took place. Jewish residents since the late Middle Ages had survived plague, persecution, and expulsion – especially in the post-Reformation period – in only a few areas, most notably in the southeast and in Frankfurt am Main in the west. The

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rest of the German territories had largely been emptied of Jews: ‘By 1570 Jews had been cleared from every major German secular territory except Hesse, and from every Imperial Free City of any importance except Frankfurt.’1 A combination of absolutist ambition and mercantilist policy brought Jews back to the Germanies: sovereigns rebuilding shattered economies came to regard the Jews as a source of direct revenue and an aid in restoring economic activity, and a convenient means for consolidating dynastic or state power by circumventing the Estates. The case of Brandenburg illustrates the point. In 1662 Friedrich Wilhelm promulgated an edict declaring a ‘Christian toleration and moderation ... so that the truth can be sought, and found, in peace.’ In 1664 he extended toleration to dissenting Protestant sects. And in 1671 he defied the Estates and admitted fifty Jewish families recently expelled from Vienna, declaring, ‘that the Jews and their commerce seem not detrimental to us and the country but rather beneficial.’2 Friedrich Wilhelm’s edicts demonstrate the extent to which mercantilist practice outpaced mercantilist theory. Although he assumed that the Jews were economically beneficial, most mercantilist theory at the time asserted the opposite.3 Friedrich Wilhelm’s toleration of Jews and dissenters must be placed in context. The Peace of Westphalia had established the toleration of private worship for the three recognized religions – Lutherans, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics – but not for dissenting Protestants or Jews. The burden of discussion at the end of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century was the question whether Jews should be accorded the same toleration as the recognized religions. Friedrich Wilhelm’s edicts exemplify the tradition of raison d’état still wed to inherited theological perceptions: economic considerations dictated that the Jews be admitted, but theological ones determined their highly circumscribed and inferior position. The Jews admitted were limited in their occupations and place of residence, required to pay numerous special taxes, and allowed private devotion but no synagogue. What should also be obvious is that only some Jews were held to be beneficial. Friedrich Wilhelm admitted only wealthy families; he did not admit any poor ones. But poor Jews nevertheless managed to find ways to resettle in Brandenburg, as well as in other German states. It has been estimated that in 1750, some 60,000 to 70,000 Jews lived in the areas that were later to constitute Imperial Germany. Of these, half or more lived below the level of the guild masters, and well over half lived a marginal existence supported by petty trade, begging, and thievery. Mercantilist

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policy and raison d’état dictated that these Betteljuden and Troedeljuden be excluded or, as in the case of Prussia in 1750, expelled. Gaining a right of residence anywhere in the German states was often unachievable, unless one was in the employ of the mercantile elite. And even those Jews who found domicile in a village or rural hamlet often struggled to eke out a living because of occupational restrictions and other disabilities, the most humiliating being the transit tax (Leibzoll), otherwise applicable only to cattle.4 The interweaving of economic and theological factors can also be seen in theological sources. For example, at the turn of the eighteenth century, Philip Jacob Spener, one of the founders of Pietism, defended toleration of the Jews without relinquishing his commitment to their conversion. At the outset he defended the Pietist notions of toleration and freedom of conscience: Pietists were at the forefront of the argument for religious toleration in general, and Spener asserted that, like the members of all other faiths, the Jews should not be subjected to compulsion of any kind.5 His commitment to converting the Jews rested on his conviction that the sovereign should tolerate them not because of the material benefit they bring, but because it is his Christian duty: just as he should help his Christian subjects to attain grace, he should help his Jewish ones to recognize Christ. It is precisely in this commitment to conversion that the secular influence of mercantilism appears. Spener argued that conversion required a shift from the immoral occupations of trade (Handelschafft und Schachern) to the moral ones of agriculture and husbandry, which would benefit the state and the Jews’ souls even more. Here Spener is drawing on the Pietist notion of conversion (Bekehrung) as a true ‘rebirth’ (Wiedergeburt) of the individual. The Jew who converts must be a Christian not only in name but in deed; he must show his ability to be an ‘active Christian’ capable of a truly Christian life. The demand for rebirth was central to Pietism in general (Spener asked it also of his fellow Christians), yet when applied to the Jews it had socioeconomic implications; it created a crucial link between theology and occupations.6 Another impetus for the debate on toleration and eventually, rights, was the changing nature of the German states. In the period after the Thirty Years War, the states were attempting to centralize their administrative structures and functions, and to achieve fiscal independence by undermining corporate institutions.7 Attempts to alter the communal autonomy of the Jews belonged to this process: the corporate privileges of the Jewish communities were easy targets, especially by comparison with the Estates. In some cases the settlement privileges granted to Jews

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during this period limited legal jurisdiction, powers of taxation, and the right to admit additional Jews (e.g., Berlin).8 In other cases a lack of historical privileges and concomitant dependence on the sovereign made the Jewish community especially vulnerable. Such encroachment increasingly integrated the Jews into the mechanism of the all-pervasive bureaucratic state. This policy was an outgrowth of Enlightenment (Aufklärung) natural law theory, which posited that an unmediated relationship between state and subject was a prerequisite for the realization of natural rights. Yet such administrative integration remained compatible with the ‘well-ordered police state’ (Polizeistaat) that also discriminated against the Jews. Theologians reflected on such issues. Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten, the professor of theology at Halle whom Voltaire called ‘the jewel in the crown of German scholarship,’ began advocating toleration of the Jews in the 1740s. Baumgarten’s argument rested on the principle of freedom of conscience: an inviolable right, which the state has a responsibility to insure and which must be extended to the Jews, as well as to members of other minority religions. Baumgarten’s main concern was to delineate the state’s relationship to the Jews, not in matters of taxation or commerce, but in matters of religion and belief. Baumgarten wrote in the collegialist tradition of ecclesiastical natural law: the authorities exercise ‘supervision and authority over all religious associations and parties,’ yet in so doing must respect ‘natural’ as well as ‘revealed’ law in order that civil and religious needs are not set in opposition.9 Thus the Jews are to be allowed to hold their services and arrange them according to established practice as well as to adjudicate their internal conflicts.10 Yet Baumgarten did not entirely renounce conversion as a goal. Following inherited Christian practice, he distinguished between the sin and the sinner: we tolerate the Jew, not Judaism. He advocated civil rather than dogmatic toleration. Two of his subordinate arguments are also noteworthy. First, he asserted that raison d’état favoured toleration: population is a source of wealth, and thus the Jews must be tolerated for the sake of the commonweal. In addition, he acknowledged Christian responsibility for the Jews’ suffering and the failure of efforts at conversion. He ascribed his views to ‘merciful love and deepest sympathy for this unhappy people, whose suffering exceeds those of other unbelieving people and for which we Christians have been obligated to play such a lamentable part by so many facets of our revealed doctrines, and whose improvement (Besserung) is hindered rather than helped by all forceful means of conversion.’11 Sig-

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nificantly, the term Baumgarten associated with conversion was precisely Besserung. Toleration of the Jews continued to be put forth until the mid-eighteenth century by a state pursuing secular raison d’état, on the one side, and by theologians who wove together economic, political, and doctrinal motives, on the other. At this point toleration seems to have become something of an accepted fact, even if opponents were not lacking. Around mid-century the theme of ‘virtue’ (Tugend), given an enlightened twist, assumed central significance in German thought. Aufklärers posited that virtue could replace shared religious beliefs as the principle that guarantees ethical behaviour within societies. This set of ideas had been developing since the later seventeenth century when German natural law theorists and neo-Stoicists began a determined effort to locate reliable foundations for society. The ideas had been disseminated in the ubiquitous moral weeklies, as well as in learned tomes and belleslettres.12 The enlighteners envisioned a society of virtuous men (the extent to which women were included is questionable) rather than a society of believers, although they did not exclude believers from membership in the society governed by virtue. But despite the assumptions of universality, it was doubted that the Jews were, or even could be, virtuous. Some of the first literary attempts to come to grips with this issue were made at about the same time that Baumgarten was writing his tract. Christian Gellert and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, for example, devised the character of the ‘noble Jew’ (edler Jude). For both of them the character was a literary construct rather than a realistic portrayal. For Gellert it showed the possibility ‘that there are pure hearts even among that people which seems least likely to have them,’ but also – in keeping with Baumgarten – that Christians were in part responsible for the Jews’ plight: ‘Perhaps many of these people would have better hearts if, with our contempt and cunning violence, we did not make them abject and deceitful in their transactions, and did not through our ideas often force them to hate our religion.’ Lessing’s figure similarly aimed to show the possibility of finding virtue where it was least expected.13 Cameralist literature of the period displays a similar shift: the Jews are no longer considered economically unproductive but are now seen to be a source of wealth.14 Still, there was ambivalence and thus Gellert could also write, albeit in private correspondence, of an old Jew he had just seen: ‘an old worthy Jew, if such exists.’ This ambivalence had the significant result that, when the concept of rights started to supplant that of toleration as the basis for policies

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towards minority groups, rights were understood conditionally, as contingent on some form of improvement or regeneration. The issue of rights emerged with the politicization of the German Enlightenment in the 1770s and 1780s. In those decades the moral weeklies were supplemented by a new genre of publication, the civic journals (staatsbuergerliche Journale), which enabled the enlighteners to add to discussions of morality, aesthetics and religion, issues of social reform and political constitutions. At the same time, a new crop of secondary associations emerged, which were also devoted to the discussion of such issues. These associations made possible social relationships between individuals from different estates, and discussions within these groups in fact touched on the notion of a polity or society organized according to merit and/or virtue rather than birth. Together these publications and associations constituted a new ‘public sphere’ (Oeffentlichkeit), which contested the state’s monopoly on politics by representing the ‘natural right’ of the educated public to share political information, if not to participate in the political process.15 The subject of rights for Jews, far from being an isolated concern, belonged to the larger discussion attending the breakdown of estate society and projections of a new political and social order. Yet it was an especially significant subject: the Jews were the ultimate testing ground for Enlightenment ideals. If they could be made virtuous and integrated into society, then no group would elude the Enlightenment and frustrate its goals.16 These issues came to the fore in Christian Wilhelm Dohm’s On the Civic Amelioration of the Jews (1781). Dohm’s book, essentially a systematic presentation of the problem of the Jews in society, established the contours of the debate on rights. It organized arguments already long in circulation into a consistent, coherent, and fundamentally secular framework. Dohm dismissed all theological and religious argument. He argued instead from raison d’état: a state’s well-being depended on a productive population, and the state contradicted its own principles when it did not exploit fully every segment of the populace. To hinder the Jews’ economic contribution with restrictive laws because of their beliefs was foolish. ‘Our well-established states must find every citizen acceptable who observes the laws and increases the state’s wealth with his industry.’ Indeed, the Jews’ need for improvement was a direct result of centuries of persecution. Dohm embraced both the Enlightenment’s notion of perfectibility (‘the Jew is more a man than a Jew’) and its environmental explanation for change: ‘When the oppression which he

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experienced for centuries has made him morally corrupt, then a more equitable treatment will again restore him.’ 17 The state should immediately grant the Jews rights and then superintend the ‘civic amelioration’ that would make them ‘morally and politically better than they are now.’18 He recommended that the Jews abandon commerce for morally healthy occupations, especially artisanry and farming, and that they educate their children in a new spirit either by changing the curricula of their own schools or sending them to state schools. Dohm’s tract played a major role in focusing the argument on emancipation. Of course, focus should not be confused with causality: rights were granted, not as the result of persuasive arguments, but as part of the overhaul of the German states during the Napoleonic wars. As German states drafted new constitutions in an effort further to dismantle the estate structure and shape societies capable of withstanding and competing with imperial France, they also extended rights to the Jews. Emancipating the Jews served dynastic interests and raison d’état. After 1815, when that motivation no longer obtained, rights were either rescinded or gradually eroded by administrative fiat.19 When one considers the terms of resettlement and Spener, Baumgarten, and the nature of the German state, the Enlightenment’s notion of virtue, and Dohm, then it becomes clear that the development of the discourse from toleration to rights was not a simple linear process of secularization. If not, then how should the process be understood? In some respects there was a complicated transposition of terms whereby religious concepts were gradually replaced by secular equivalents. Spener had established the link between occupations and conversion. Baumgarten had seen conversion as a form of ‘improvement’ and had also understood the Jews’ condition to be a result of the way Christians had treated them. Dohm’s discussion had wittingly drawn on secular precedents, yet had unwittingly echoed the earlier theological debate as well. Was the notion of improvement or regeneration the secular equivalent of conversion? Was conversion the price Jews had to pay when they were conceived as the religious Other, improvement the price of recognition as the moral Other? These basic questions remain to be answered.

Notes 1 Jonathan Irvine Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 23. 2 Quoted in Gerhard Besier, ‘Toleranz,’ in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: His-

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4

5

6

7

8

9

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torisches Lexicon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Otto Brunner/Werner Conze/Reinhart Koselleck, 1990), vol. 6, 496–97. Shmuel Ettinger cites the examples of William Petty in England and Johann Joachim Becher in Germany. See, ‘The Beginnings of the Change in the Attitude of European Society towards the Jews,’ Scripta Hierosolymitana 7 (1961), 211–12. Jacob Toury, ‘Der Eintritt der Juden ins deutsche Buergertum,’ in Hans Liebeschuetz and Arnold Paucker (eds.), Das Judentum in der deutschen Umwelt (Tuebingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1977), 139ff. For a judicious overview of the Jews’ situation in the period, see Mordechai Breuer, ‘The Early Modern Period,’ in Michael Meyer (ed.), German-Jewish History in Modern Times, vol. 1, Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600–1780 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 81–260. On the role of Pietists in advocating toleration, see Walter Grossmann, ‘Religious Toleration in Germany, 1648–1750,’ Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 201 (1982), 127–31. ‘Christliches Bedencken wegen der anstalten zur Bekehrung einiger Juden an denen orten, da dieselbe wohnen,’ in Theologische Bedencken, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (Halle: n.p., 1712–15), vol. 4, 87–99. I was able to read this rare publication in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Part of Spener’s concern stems from the fact that most of the converts in this period were indigent Jews without fixed occupations. On the Jews and Pietism, see Koppel S. Pinson, ‘German Pietism and the Jews,’ in Salo Baron, Ernest Nagel, and Koppel Pinson (eds.), Freedom and Reason: Studies in Philosophy and Jewish Culture in Memory of Morris Raphael Cohen (Glencoe: Free Press, 1951), 397–412; and Christopher Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). For the case of Prussia, see Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660–1815 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958). The classic study remains Selma Stern, Der preussische Staat und die Juden, 8 vols. (Tuebingen: Max Kreutzberger, 1962–75) (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts). Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten, Theologisches Bedenken von gewissenhafter Duldung der Juden und ihres Gottesdienstes unter den Christen (Halle: n.p., 1745), 19. The tract was a response to an attack on the selichoth prayer by a Jewish convert to Christianity. For this genre of literature, see Udo Arnoldi, Pro Judaeis: Die Gutachten der hallischen Theologen im 18. Jahrhundert zu Fragen der Judentoleranz, Studien zur Kirche und Israel, vol. 14 (Berlin, 1993). On Baumgarten see

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15

16 17 18 19

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David Sorkin, ‘Reclaiming Theology for the Enlightenment: The Case of Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706–1757),’ Central European History 36 (2004), 503–30. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 5. For the ideal of virtue in the moral weeklies, see Wolfgang Martens, Die Botschaft der Tugend: Die Aufklaerung im Spiegel der deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1968). Juergen Stenzel, ‘Idealisierung und Vorurteil: Zur Figur des “edeln Juden” in der deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts,’ in Stephane Moses and Albrecht Schoene (eds.), Juden in der deutschen Literatur (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), 114–26. This is particularly noticeable in the work of Johann Heinrich Justi, the author of the Staatswissenschaft, oder systematische Abhandlungen aller oekonomischen und Kameralwissenschaften (Leipzig: n.p., 1755). See Jacob Toury, ‘Die Behandlung juedischer Problematik in der Tagesliteratur der Aufklaerung (bis 1783),’ Jahrbuch des Instituts fuer deutsche Geschichte 5 (1976), 23. See the articles by Ulrich im Hof, Horst Moeller, Hans Erich Boedeker, and Diethelm Klippel in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). On the public sphere, see Juergen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit (Darmstadt: Herman Luchterhand Verlag, 1962). David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 20. Christoph Wilhelm Dohm, Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, 2 vols. (Berlin and Stettin), vol. 1, 86–7. Ibid., vol. 2, 152 Sorkin, Transformation, 13–40.

eight

Discrediting Slavery: From the Société des Amis des Noirs to the Haitian Revolution – Ideological Patterns and Anthropological Discourses HANS-JÜRGEN LÜSEBRINK

Scenarios On Monday, 12 September 1785, the inhabitants of Lyon witnessed a strange event: as a matter of fact, they saw a procession of former slaves, bought from the bey of Algiers by the archbishops of Lyon and Paris so that they could be emancipated. According to the detailed information provided by the Journal de Lyon, the 313 slaves, who for the most part were white French people, had cost the considerable sum of 639,052 pounds, ‘including quarantine costs, travel expenses, and costs necessary for enabling them to rejoin their families.’1 Although this was not the first buyout – one had already occurred in 1765 – the 1785 event was the first in which the Catholic Church in France would use the expensive operation as a form of elaborately staged religious propaganda. On this September morning, 112 former slaves accompanied by the canons of Trinity Church and a lot of priests made a formal entry into the town of Lyon. A military band and gunshots provided a musical background to the procession, which moved to the parish church of St John’s, where the Te Deum was sung. The slaves’ procession, led by ‘sumptuously dressed children,’2 ended in a celebration of the powers of the ancien régime and of its mercy towards the poorest of the poor. Not only were the religious authorities present, each carrying ‘a palm picked on the coasts of Africa, symbol of their meritorious work,’3 but also the secular authorities: the king’s commissioners, the provost of the merchants of Lyon, the lieutenant-general of the police, and at least symbolically, the king of France himself, represented by an actor who was wearing the traditional royal garb. The imposing procession, which one witness called ‘magnifi-

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cent and touching,’ was closed by a group of canons, who were singing the ‘beautiful psalm In exitu Israël, whose moral meaning is indeed capable of inspiring the French with the gratitude which the Nation owes His Majesty for having freed so many people from a hard captivity.’4 Only eight and a half years later, in June 1794, the inhabitants of Lyon – like the inhabitants of many other large French cities at that time – witnessed anew a ceremony of slave emancipation, which was followed, on 8 September 1794 (20 Ventôse, An II [1792]), by the celebration of the Feast of Equality. The latter ceremony centred on the official proclamation of the decree abolishing slavery that had been passed 4 February 1794 by the French National Assembly. In the great silence created by a ‘general drum roll,’ the public listened to the reading of this decree and then witnessed its symbolical adaptation for the stage. As one journalist reports, a group of slaves – ‘black men of every sex and age, chained together,’5 – at the centre of the festive procession were freed from their chains by militant revolutionaries. After the proclamation of the decree, the journalist continues (using the reporter’s present tense), ‘sansculottes, bearing [a placard inscribed with] the “Rights of Man,” surge towards the base of the Mountain, break the slaves’ irons and escort the slaves in triumph to the summit, where, to the sound of artillery they are embraced by the Representatives of the People and the Sans-Culottes. At a signal given by the general, soldiers armed with pikes gathered them [their pikes] on the Mountain into a sheaf of concord [faisceau d’union], around which men of all colours formed a dancing chain. After the requisite time devoted to the outpouring of everyone’s feelings, there was a second drum roll, a signal for universal silence; a speech was delivered, which was followed by several patriotic anthems, adapted for the fête.’6 The fête ended with a civic banquet and dancing around the ‘Mountain.’ Although the two previously described scenarios share a common theme, the liberation of slaves, both real and symbolical, they attest at the same time to a fundamental transformation in perceptions of slavery, which distinguishes the traditional French society of the ancien régime from the Enlightenment-inspired one of the French Revolution. The scenario at Lyon in 1785 presents slavery as a foreign, external phenomenon, embodied ‘par excellence’ by the despotic systems of the Orient. In contrast, the Feast of Equality of February 1794 specifically links the phenomenon of slavery to Blacks and to plantation culture, and thus brings the phenomenon close to home by pointing to its roots in the French colonial system. As the conception of the slave changes, so too does the portrayal of the liberator. In 1785 the freed slaves are a symbol

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of the mercy and kind paternalism of the king, his representatives, and the high clergy. In 1794, on the contrary, the liberated slaves form the nucleus of a new, anti-monarchical ideology of equality and fraternity, wherein all men are conceived as equal and as brothers, restored to their natural rights by the ‘General Will,’ acting through the medium of the ‘French Nation.’

Semantics These two emancipation scenarios carry the traces of a semantic expansion of the terms esclave (slave) and esclavage (slavery). Whereas the royal and religious feast of 1785 draws clear dividing lines between the actors and the crowd of spectators, between the slaves and their merciful liberators, the republican feast of 1794 continually joins all these groups together in a portrayal of slave emancipation as a logical consequence of the liberation of the whole ‘French Nation.’ In the later scenario, the yoke imposed on the people of France by the despotism of the ancien régime is compared to the one that put Black slaves in chains on colonial plantations; the two forms of servitude are portrayed as different in their intensity, although fundamentally identical in their basic structure. The concept of slavery, which in the ancien régime designated a phenomenon of ‘radical otherness,’ correlated in some way with eastern despotism and the harems of Damascus, has been transformed into a political term with universalist connotations. ‘France was the slave of royalty, nobility, clergy, of all the aristocrats,’7 claims the Journal de Lyon a few weeks after the aforementioned Feast of Equality, in a statement that sums up very well the conceptual changes that had occurred during the century. This political and universalist dimension appears in numerous pamphlets and other publications from the late Enlightenment and revolutionary periods: in pamphlets like La Liberté sur le trône, et l’esclavage sous les pieds (Liberty on the Throne and Slavery Underfoot) published in 1789, or in manifestos like Des Peuples esclaves et des peuples libres (About Slave Peoples and Free Peoples), published in 1791 in the periodical Mercure national, et révolutions de l’Europe, Journal démocratique, where slavery is compared to an ‘unnatural condition,’ because the natural condition of man is ‘to be free and to die as a free man.’8 Similar articles could be found in periodicals like the Journal encyclopédique. Even the Feuille villageoise, perhaps the most widely circulated French newspaper in rural areas in the 1780s, routinely compares the social condition of peasants in the ancien regime to that of slave-workers on plantations in the French West Indies.9

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Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink Figure 8.1 The Lexical Field of Dépendance after Condillac (1758–67)

Subjection

Slavery

Subjugation

Servitude

Captivity

Source: Derived from Condillac, Dictionnaire des synonymes (Paris, 1758–67).

The analysis of the ideological use of the terms esclave and esclavage (hereafter slave and slavery respectively) during the last decades of the eighteenth century shows a clear and striking evolution. For Condillac, from what we can read in his Dictionnaire des synonymes published between 1758 and 1767, the concept of slavery belongs to the lexical field of terms referring to forms of dependence (see Fig. 8.1). Inside this lexical field, which, for Condillac, consists essentially of the ideas of subjection, subjugation, servitude, and captivity, the term slavery acts as one pole, which brings all the semantic features of the other terms together, except those attached to the opposite pole: servitude. Slavery connotes a state of extreme dependence, in which the slave lives humiliated and deprived of a legal identity. It is an institution belonging to the ancient Graeco-Latin civilization, to the East, and to the far-off plantation colonies of America. Servitude, on the contrary, characterizes ties of dependence with a legal base, such as those of serfdom in European feudal society. The scission between the two phenomena of slavery and servitude – the first perceived as far-off, monstrous, barbarous, and illegal, and the second as harsh but legal – disappeared during the last decades of the eighteenth century in the wake of a general transformation of political speech (see Table 8.1). Instead of forming a pole designating the ‘extreme and exotic’ in the lexical field of dependence, ‘slavery’ became a generic term referring to any situation of oppression that violated natural and civil rights. It covered Europe as well as the colonies and antiquity as well as the immediate present of the reign of Louis XVI. ‘I like to believe as well,’

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Table 8.1 The Lexical Field of ‘Slavery’ at the End of the Eighteenth Century (1770–1794) Syntagms I (associative network)

Syntagms II (attributes)

Slavery Despotism Tyranny Cannibalism Barbarism Law of Blood Revenge Penal Code Source of Crime Crime against Humanity Monstrous Acts of Cruelty

Horrible Unworthy Despicable Vile Monstrous Cruel Bloody

Syntagms III (correlates)

Antonyms (oppositions)

Depravity Bestiality Brute passions Dirtiness Violence Savagery Thirst for Revenge Cruelty Superstitions Ignorance

Equality Nature Natural Rights Liberty Wisdom Happiness Free People Morals Pure Virtue Civil Rights

Source: About 100 pamphlets, political speeches, political catechisms, and articles in periodicals with the terms ‘esclaves,’ ‘servitude,’ and ‘esclavage’ in their titles.

writes Jean-Joseph Dusaulx about the 14 July 1789 storming of the Bastille, in which he had participated, ‘that after breaking the yoke which our brothers had to carry, we will never become enslaved again.’10 All of these late eighteenth-century texts have in common two facts: first, that they place the concept of slavery in a network of oppositions, and second, that they transfer its predominant meaning to new fields of application. By means of the mechanism of semantic expansion, slavery acquires a broad network of associations, with terms like despotism, tyranny, and barbarousness occurring most frequently in the paradigm. At the same time, by being associated with extremely negative attributes – horrible, shameful, odious, infamous, cruel, monstrous, and criminal – slavery is clearly opposed to the highly regarded attributes at the nucleus

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of the Enlightenment’s discourse – equality, nature, liberty, civilization, happiness, free people, morals, virtue, unity, and civil rights. This opposition pointedly underscores the dichotomous structure of the new lexical field. The debate on the abolition of slavery in the French colonies that began in the Constituent Assembly in 179011 referred frequently to the ideologically charged, extremely negative field of semantic connotations attached to the terms of slave and slavery. ‘The mere word “slave,” pronounced in the sanctuary of liberty,’ declares, for example, one of the Parisian newspapers of the time, ‘has effected a kind of horror or even shame ... The horrible name of slavery has caused true indignation; but when oneself holds one end of the chain of slaves, this noble movement does not really signify anything other than that one should not speak of ropes in the house of a hanged man’ (i.e., one must not allude to the skeleton in the closet).12 The extended signification of the terms was disseminated in the numerous political catechisms of the revolutionary period. These publications adapted a religious literary form to new functions and were, together with engravings, songs, and some newspapers, the most popular media of the time. Boissel’s Catéchisme du genre humain (1789) distinguishes, for example, between the narrow signification of slavery as an institution of the plantation colonies (which he associates to barbarism and monstrosity13) and a broader signification of slavery as a phenomenon linked to generally ‘anti-social’ and ‘pernicious’ conditions. As Boissel shows in his chapter entitled ‘De l’esclavage,’ this extension of the semantic field of the central ideological terms of slave and slavery implies that a general transformation of social and political conditions is needed. ‘In the unfortunate present state of human life,’ he writes, ‘there is no condition where human beings are really free: everywhere they are dominated by their passions ... or by despotism ... or by law. It is this last sort of servitude which constitutes what, in the present state of things, we call civil or political liberty.’14

Anthropology In texts on slavery from the end of the eighteenth century, two faces most commonly characterize the figure of the slave. The first, the idealized, utopian, but also impersonal face of a child of nature, is found most commonly in novels like Joseph Lavallée’s Le Nègre comme il y a peu de Blancs (1789) or Olympe de Gouges’s drama L’Esclavage des Noirs (1792). The second, the face of the insurgent slave, who is frequently treated as

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a reincarnation of Spartacus, is presented with new historical dimensions in two late Enlightenment texts, Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An 2440 and Guillaume Thomas François Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes (1780). Lavallée’s novel relates the destiny of the slave Hanoko, born on the riverside of Senegal, who loves a woman Amélie of mixed-race heritage, and who happens to be captured by slave traders and taken away to the American plantations. ‘It is not really a novel,’ writes the author in his preface, ‘it is the story of a national character which I present in the character of a single man: this man has virtues and he is estimable; if these virtues are nothing else but the virtues of his nation, we have to respect them. That is the claim of this book.’15 In contrast to this highly idealized, simplistic, virtuous, sensitive face, there is the angry grimace of the insurgent slave, embodied for White European contemporaries by the rebels in the French colony of SaintDomingue and by the Black leaders, the generals Dessalines and Toussaint-Louverture, who assumed control in the colony. The violence in Saint-Domingue, which eventually brought about the independence of Haiti, accompanied as it was by the massacre of several thousand White colonists and by the defeat of the French army in 1802, caused contemporaries to rethink the meaning of slavery. The Otherness and colonial specificity of this human condition assumed paramount importance, whether in antagonistic or sympathetic portrayals of Blacks. An extremely negative discourse on the revolt of the Black slave, whose most condensed and most typical expression is perhaps the short story by Heinrich von Kleist, entitled Die Hochzeit von Santo Domingo (1808), appeared alongside a more positive anthropological discourse rooted in the specificity of the slave situation. The negative texts, often stemming from West Indian planters’ circles, considered the brutality of the revolt to be proof of the inborn moral inferiority of the ‘Black race.’ In contrast, some politicians and writers, many of them associates of the Société des Amis des Noirs, founded in 1788, stressed the faculty of intellectual evolution displayed by Blacks. The cause of the brutal violence in Saint-Domingue lay, according to these writers, in the oppressive character of the slave system rather than in an innate inferiority of the Black race. In a speech on behalf of the Commune of Paris at the Feast of the Abolition of Slavery in February 1794, Anaxagoras Chaumette, for example, portrayed slavery as ‘the greatest evil,’ an institution in which ‘human beings are extinguished.’16 The pamphlet, Le Cri des Africains contre les Européens, published in 1822 by English philanthropist Thomas Clarkson, a correspondent of Abbé Henri Grégoire, developed a far-reaching argument against the crimes of

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the slave system. Clarkson stressed less the obvious brutalities inherent in the slave-trading system than the anthropological consequences of slavery. According to him, slavery has changed the nature of man and destroyed the evolution of African cultures. ‘There is a crime,’ writes Clarkson ‘which lies heavy on their [the slave traders’] guilty heads, the crime of having delayed the African civilization by about three centuries.’17 Earlier, in correspondence with Mirabeau in 1789, Clarkson offered a kind of ethnological survey of the kingdoms of Saloum, Sine, and Cayor in Senegal, proving that these kingdoms were ‘something other than reservations of “savages,” good for nothing other than the slave trade carried on by the Europeans.’18 Like René-Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, a member of the Société des Amis des Noirs who was a physician, adviser to the governor of Senegal, and author of the monumental four-volume work, L’Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains: Le Sénégal (1814), Clarkson drew a picture of an African civilization whose social foundations and capacities for cultural expression had been thoroughly shaken up by the colonial intrusion and slave trade. It was the Abbé Henri Grégoire, a representative of the low clergy at the French National Assembly in 1789, also a member of the Société des Amis des Noirs and the main instigator of the 1794 decree that abolished slavery, however, who presented the most ambitious attempt at conceiving a new anthropological discourse on slavery. His book, De la littérature des nègres, written and published in 1808, after the collapse of attempts to reintroduce slavery in the French colonies and the shock of General Leclerc’s defeat by the insurgents of Saint-Domingue, moved resolutely against the ideological mainstream of the time. Like Chaumette, Geoffroy de Villeneuve, and Clarkson, Grégoire believed that slavery is destructive of culture and of essential human nature. But he went on to use this basic assumption as a launching point for a far-reaching survey of the capacities for cultural and intellectual development displayed by former slaves. Portraits of such individuals who had been freed and had become writers, musicians, painters, or politicians – among them, Olaudah Equiano, Julien Raymond, a mulatto from Saint-Domingue who authored the pamphlet La véritable origine des troubles de Saint-Domingue (1791), and Raymond Ogé – constitute the central part of this book. The work was destined to have a substantial effect on the nascent African and West Indian cultural movements of the 1920s and 1930s.19 Grégoire’s comparative viewpoint permitted him to question established anthropological assertions about the intellectual and cultural differences among human races. In his concluding chapter he states:

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Without any doubt, Negros, in general, are both ignorant and have ridiculous prejudices, and also all the vices attached to slaves of any kind, of any colour. What would you have been, you French, English and Dutch peoples, had you been placed in the same circumstances? I affirm that you do not have the right to reproach them for even the most stupid errors, or the most horrible crimes ... In order to compare peoples, you have to place them in the same circumstances. What equal point of comparison can you establish between Whites, enlightened by Christianity which has brought nearly all other forms of enlightenment, enriched by discoveries, surrounded by the cultural heritage of centuries, and stimulated by all kinds of encouragement; and, on the other side, Blacks deprived of all these advantages who are condemned to oppression and misery?20

In spite of its innovative dimension, Grégoire’s book, which provoked violent attacks, particularly from West Indian planters,21 is a deeply ambivalent work. Its anthropological arguments, like those of Chaumette and Clarkson, restore to the phenomenon of slavery its historical and cultural specificity, locating it within the particular context of colonial societies. Grégoire shows that by tearing its victims from the very foundations of being and existence, slavery radically and extremely questions the essence of what it means to be human and thus is not comparable with any form of dependence or servitude existent in eighteenthcentury Europe. Gregoire’s perspective seems extremely modern and anticipates the argumentation, for instance, of René Maran, in Batouala: Véritable roman nègre (1921), or of Aimé Césaire, in Discours sur le Colonialisme (1950), or of Albert Memmi, in Portrait du colonisé (1957). But at the same time, Grégoire, who was one of the leaders in charge of education policy during the French Revolution, is limited, at least from our modern perspective, by his adherence to the French Enlightenment belief that a valid universal model of civilization exists. He believed that the abolition of slavery (which he was not to see, since permanent abolition occurred only in 1848, seventeen years after his death) had to be accompanied by a global plan for the education and acculturation of former slaves, if an irruption of revenge and uncontrolled passions, caused by the stupefying effects of slavery on its subjects, was to be avoided. It seems significant that, in his portraits of former slaves, now intellectually and culturally ‘improved,’ Grégoire implicitly accepted as a cultural and political norm the French civilization of the Enlightenment and the Revolution. That this model of acculturation was internalized by the persons themselves affected can be readily seen in the speech made at the Feast of

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Abolition of Slavery in February 1794 by Jean-Baptiste Belley, a Black deputy from Saint-Domingue.22 Belley, who was born in Africa and taken to the West Indies at the age of two, was thought by contemporaries to be a follower of the Abbé Raynal. He was considered the embodiment of the figure of the ‘Black Spartacus’ prophesied by his famous ‘negrophil’ teacher in the Histoire des Deux Indes. The internalization of the model (no doubt facilitated by Grégoire’s personal influence) is not, however, restricted to outstanding individuals like Belley but can also be found in the first post-colonial societies governed by former African slaves. In the Republic of Haiti, where Grégoire served as a sort of official councillor to President Boyer, his intimate friend,23 European models of political structure (absolute monarchy and republic in the tradition of the revolutionary French constitution of 1793) and cultural development were used to underpin the political and cultural arguments legitimizing the liberation of people from colonial domination and slavery. The same was true in the Kingdom of Haiti (the northern half of the former French colony of Saint-Domingue), which was ruled until 1820 by King Henri Christophe. There, the comte de Limonade, minister of foreign affairs and lieutenant-general of the army, regularly kept Grégoire informed of the impact of De la littérature des nègres on King Christophe and the Haitian elite: ‘His majesty is full of admiration for your book,’ wrote Limonade to Grégoire on 10 June 1814, ‘and he has made of it his main reading and object of meditation ... He has given the order to distribute fifty copies of the book to the most important magistrates and generals of Haiti, and to insert in all periodicals the most important passages of it, in order to instruct the Haitian people, and especially the inhabitants of the countryside.’24 It seems significant that the comte de Limonade, who called Grégoire ‘the only European having the courage to say the truth without any fear,’25 used in an almost stereotyped manner the Enlightenment discourse on progress in order to describe the rapid evolution of the Haitian society from slave colony to independent state governed by former slaves. He emphasized the ‘prosperity’ of the young nation, its ‘stable, just and paternal government,’ the high standard of its ‘military skills’ (art militaire), its ‘purified morals,’ ‘protection of agriculture,’ and developing ‘social virtues.’26 The Haitian Revolution and its consequences are, in this official Haitian point of view, a confirmation of the anthropological assertions formulated by Grégoire and his forerunners. The very first article on Haitian literature, published in 1819 in the Revue encyclopédique in Paris and entitled ‘De la littérature haitienne,’ referred in the same way to Grégoire’s pioneering work on cultural

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anthropology. The author, the Haitian writer Antoine Métral, stresses that Grégoire’s supposition of a fundamental equality among human races, and especially his extension of that equality to include Africans, had been based on ‘isolated cases’ of Black men and women, ‘transplanted’ into civilized societies; ‘today,’ he continues, ‘ it is important to consider what they [Blacks] have done and can do as a whole nation.’27 In his quite astonishing survey of the rise of the first generation of Haitian poets, writers, journalists, and historians, most of them located at the court of King Christophe in the palace of Sans-Souci in the mountains of northern Haiti, Métral seeks to demonstrate the veracity of Grégoire’s anthropological thesis. ‘However, these men who have been treated like animals, have already supplied rich materials for history. Blacks who have lived as slaves are very different from those who have lived since under the condition of liberty. Their customs, their manners, their intellectual capacities, their feelings [coeur], their character, their language, their hatreds, and their affections can be found chiefly in their historical writings; we can divide them into four categories: letters, memoranda or reports, biographical notices, and periodicals.’28 The capacity of Blacks for intellectual and cultural ‘evolution’ (in the Enlightenment sense of the term), demonstrated above all in writings, not only provided essential facts for those who, during the French Revolution, sought to discredit anthropologically based apologies for slavery but also, from the nineteenth-century period of Haitian emancipation and independence through the 1930s, served the cause of self-legitimation for Afro-American intellectuals and politicians.29 This situation changed, however, in the 1940s and 1950s. Where some writers and intellectuals like Senghor, Ousmane Socé, and even Césaire, continued to see in Grégoire and the Société des Amis des Noirs important forerunners of Négritude theory; others, more politicized and radical, began to disconnect their positions from this Enlightenment paradigm. Thus Fily Dabo Sissoko, for example, or Yambo Ouologuem from Mali, or Amadou Kourouma from the Ivory Coast, began arguing that the Enlightenment model of acculturation, centred as it was on European languages, fine arts,30 and conceptualizations of progress, culture, civilization, education, and morals, was out of date, precisely because it reflected the Western will to offer its specific, historical cultural norms as universals.

Notes 1 ‘Procession des esclaves,’ Journal de Lyon 20 (1785), 318: ‘y compris les frais de quarantaine, ceux de route et ceux qui se trouvent nécessaires pour

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mettre ces esclaves en état de rejoindre chacun leur famille.’ Unless otherwise stated, all translations are mine (HJL.) Ibid. Relation du passage à Lyon des Esclaves françois rachetés à Alger par MM. Les Chanoines réguliers de la Trinité et les RR. PP. De la Mercy (Lyon: n.p., 1785), 1: ‘Ils portoient chacun une palme, cueillie sur les côtes d’Afrique, symbole de leur œuvre méritoire.’ Ibid. ‘MM. les Chanoines réguliers de la Trinité de cette ville, assistés d’un nombreux Clergé, terminoient cette majestueuse procession, en chantant le beau psaulme in exitu Israël, dont le sens moral est bien capable d’inspirer aux Français la reconnoissance que la Nation doit à sa Majesté, d’avoir délivré tant de François d’une dure captivité’ (original emphasis). Journal de Lyon 29, supp. (18 ventôse, an II [1793]), 198–9, here 199: ‘Le public écouta la lecture de ce décret et assista ensuite à sa théâtralisation symbolique: un groupe d’esclaves, un groupe d’hommes noirs de tout sexe et de tout âge, enchaînés.’ Journal de Lyon 43 (16 germinal, an II), 294: ‘Sans-culottes formant le groupe porteur des Droits de l’Homme, s’élancent avec précipitation jusqu’au bas de la Montagne, brisent les fers des esclaves, les conduisent en triomphe, jusqu’au sommet, où ils sont serrés dans les bras des Représentans du Peuple et des Sans-Culottes, au bruit de l’artillerie. Au signal donné par le général, les militaires, porteurs de piques, les réuniront à la Montagne, en faisceau d’union; autour duquel les hommes de toutes les couleurs formeront les chaînes de danse. Après le temps nécessaire donné à l’effusion de tous les cœurs, il sera fait un second roulement, signal du silence universel; il sera prononcé un discours, qui sera suivi de plusieurs hymnes patriotiques, analogues à la fête!’ Journal de Lyon 29 (16 germinal, an II), 294: ‘la France était esclave de la royauté, de la noblesse, de tous les aristocrates.’ Anonymous, ‘Des Peuples esclaves et des Peuples libres,’ Mercure national, et Révolution de l’Europe, journal démocratique (15 février 1791), 1–10, here 1. ‘L’esclavage est un état contre nature; l’homme est né libre, il doit mourir tel. Malheur à celui qui arrive à la liberté! Quelques écrivains comparent les despotes à des anthropophages; ces écrivains sont au-dessous de leur sujet’; original emphasis. See, e.g., the article ‘Un Homme libre, aux Peuples esclaves,’ Journal Encyclopédique 9 (1793), 401–2; and La Feuille Villageoise 1 (Sept. 1790), 7: ‘Le Paysan a été élevé dans la servitude. C’étoit l’Esclave-né des Seigneurs et des Magistrats. En secouant leurs chaînes, il a voulu en même-temps secouer toute soumission.’

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10 Jean-Jacques Dusaulx, L’Insurrection parisienne et la prise de la Bastille (Paris: Debure, 1790), 146: ‘J’aime à croire aussi, qu’après avoir brisé le joug qu’avoient porté nos frères, nous ne retomberons jamais dans l’esclavage.’ 11 See on the ideological and the political issues of this debate the excellent article by David Geggus, ‘Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly,’ American Historical Review 94 (5) (Dec. 1989), 1290–1308. 12 Le Thermomètre de l’Opinion Publique, ou Journal des Sections de Paris 5 (1791), 40 n1: ‘Le seul mot d’esclave, prononcé dans le sanctuaire de la liberté, a causé une sorte de frémissement ou peut-être de honte. La nature, la raison, la justice, ou l’amour-propre, arrachoient-ils cet hommage aux défenseurs des droits de l’homme, dans l’instant où ils se disposoient à briser ses fers? L’horrible nom de l’esclavage a justement excité l’indignation; mais, lorsqu’on tient soi-même le bout de la chaîne des esclaves; ce noble mouvement ne signifie plus autre chose, sinon, pour me servir d’un adage vulgaire, qu’il ne faut point parler de cadre dans la maison d’un pendu.’ 13 François Boissel, ‘De l’esclavage,’ ch. 19, in Le Catéchisme du genre humain, 2nd ed. (Paris: n.p., 1792), 139–42, here 141: ‘toutes ces monstruosités.’ 14 Ibid., 141–2: ‘Dans le malheureux ordre actuel des choses humaines, il n’est point d’état où l’homme soit véritablement libre: il est par-tout dominé, ou par ses passions, qui lui rongent le coeur, ou par le despotisme, qui l’avilit, ou par la loi, qui le contraint. C’est ce dernier genre de servitude qui constitue ce que, dans l’état actuel des choses, on appelle liberté civile ou politique.’ 15 Joseph Lavallée, foreword to Le Nègre comme il y a peu de blancs, par l’auteur de Cécile fille d’Ahmet III, Empereur des Turcs, vol. 1 (Paris: n.p., 1789): ‘Ce n’est pas précisément un Roman, c’est l’histoire d’un caractère national, que j’offre dans le caractère d’un seul homme: cet homme a des vertus, et ils est estimable; si ces vertus ne sont autres que celles de sa nation, il doit les respecter. Voilà le but de cet ouvrage.’ 16 Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, Discours sur l’abolition de l’esclavage, prononcé par Anaxagoras Chaumette, au nom de la Commune de Paris (Paris, Patris, an II [1793]), 13: ‘Je parle ici à des citoyens tous convaincus de cette vérité, que l’esclavage est le plus grand des maux, et son abolition le plus grand des biens, tant pour les états que pour les particuliers: pour les états, en les préservant de ces agitations violentes qui hâtent leur chute: pour les particuliers, en les préservant de la contagion de tous les vices qui naissent de l’esclavage qui éteint les hommes ... L’esclavage qui éteint les hommes! ... idée accablante et trop vraie!’ The term ‘éteindre’ (extinguish) has here obviously two significations, including the metaphorical dimension.

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17 Thomas Clarkson, Le Cri des Africains contre les Européens, ou coup d’oeil sur le commerce homocide appelé Traite des Noirs, Traduit de l’Anglais (Paris: Cellot, 1822), 47: ‘Il est un crime surtout qui pèse sur leurs têtes coupables, celui d’avoir retardé de près de trois siècles la civilisation africaine.’ The original English version of the text was published in London. Instead of ‘African,’ the term used by Grégoire to describe blacks, Clarkson adopts the uncommon but very positive term, ‘Ethiopian.’ 18 ‘[Ils sont] autre chose que des réserves de “sauvages” tout juste bons pour la traite qu’en font les Européens.’ Letter of Clarkson written in 1789 and quoted in Françoise Thésée, ‘Documents autour de la Société des Amis des Noirs. Au Sénégal en 1789. La société africaine dans les royaumes de Sallum, de Sin et de Cayor: une enquête ethnographique avant la lettre, ‘in Roger Toumson (ed.), with Charles Porset, La Période révolutionnaire aux Antilles: Images et résonances: Actes du Colloque International Pluridisciplinaire (Schoelcher, Martinique: GRELCA, 1988), 573–92, here 580. 19 Henri Grégoire, ‘Notices de Nègres et de Mulâtres distingués par leurs talens et leurs ouvrages,’ ch. 8, in De la Littérature des Nègres, ou Recherches sur leurs facultés intellectuelles, leurs qualités morales et leur littérature; suivies de Notices sur la vie et les ouvrages des Nègres qui se sont distingués dans les Sciences, les Lettres et les Arts (Paris: Maradan, 1808), 197–272. 20 Ibid., 275–6, 280: ‘Sans contredit les Nègres, en géneral, joignent à l’ignorance des préjugés ridicules, des vices grossiers, surtout les vices inhérents aux esclaves de toute espèce, de toute couleur. Français, Anglais, Hollandais, que seriez-vous, si vous aviez été placés dans les mêmes circonstances? Je maintiens que parmi les erreurs les plus stupides, et les crimes les plus hideux, il n’en est pas un que vous ayez droit de leur reprocher ... Pour comparer des peuples, il faut les placer dans les mêmes conjonctures; et quelle parité peut s’établir entre les Blancs, éclairés des lumières du christianisme qui mène presque toutes les autres à sa suite, enrichis des découvertes, entourés de l’instruction de tous les siècles, stimulés par tous les moyens d’encouragement; et d’autre part, les Noirs privés de tous ces avantages, voués à l’oppression, à la misère?’ See also, for the anthropological position of Grégoire, Serge Daget, ‘Les mots esclave, nègre, Noir, et les jugements de valeur sur la traite négrière dans la littérature abolitionniste française de 1770 à 1845,’ Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 60 (1973), 511– 48, here 527. 21 See, e.g., Anonymous, Cri des Colons contre un ouvrage de M. l’évêque et sénateur Grégoire, ayant pour titre De la Littérature des Nègres, ou Réfutation des inculpations calomnieuses faites aux Colons par l’auteur, et par les autres philosophes négrophiles, tels que Raynal, Valmont de Bomare, etc. (Paris: Marchands de Nouveautés,

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1810), a violent pamphlet, directed not only against Grégoire’s book, De la littérature des nègres, but also against other members of the former Société des Amis des Noirs. Jean-Baptiste Belley, ‘Discours de Belley, député noir. Extrait du procès-verbal de la séance du Conseil Général de la Commune, le 23 pluviôse, an II,’ cited in Chaumette, Discours sur l’abolition de l’esclavage, 33–4: ‘Citoyens, je fus esclave dans mon enfance. Il y a 36 ans que je suis devenu libre par mon industrie; je me suis racheté moi-même. Depuis, dans le cours de ma vie, je me suis senti digne d’être Français. J’ai servi ma patrie avec l’estime de mes chefs dans la dernière guerre, à la campagne de la nouvelle Angleterre ... mon sang a coulé pour la République Française, pour la noble cause de la liberté: je ne prétends pas m’en faire un mérite, je n’ai fait que mon devoir. A peine échappé au danger de mes blessures, j’ai été nommé, par mes concitoyens, pour les représenter en France et vous apporter l’hommage de leur dévouement et de leur fidélité éternelle à la Nation Française; citoyens, voilà mes seuls titres; voilà ma gloire. Je n’ai qu’un mot à vous dire. C’est que c’est le pavilon tricolore qui nous a appelés à la liberté; c’est sous ses auspices que nous avons recouvré cette liberté, notre patrimoine et le trésor de notre postérité; et tant qu’il restera dans nos veines une goutte de sang, je vous jure, au nom de mes frères, que ce pavilon flottera toujours sur nos rivages et dans nos montagnes.’ See on this point Hans-Jügen Lüsebrink, ‘“Negrophilie” und Paternalismus: Die Beziehungen Henri Grégoires zu Haiti (1790–1831),’ in Reinhard Sander (ed.), Der karibische Raum zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung: Zur karibischen Literatur, Kultur und Gesellschaft, Bayreuther Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 6 (Frankfurt a.M./Bern/New York: Peter Lang Verlag, 1984), 99–108. Le Comte de Limonade, Lieutenant-Géneral des Armées du Roi, Secrétaire, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, à l’Evêque Henri Grégoire. Royaume d’Hayti, au Palais de Sanssouci, le 10 juin 1814. Bibl. de l’Arsenal, Mss. fr. 6339, 8 pp, here 2–3: ‘Votre ouvrage sublime de la littérature des nègres nous est parvenu; sa majesté pénétré d’admiration pour les principes de philantropie que vous professez, en a toujours fait sa principale lecture et l’objet de ses méditations ... Sa majesté a fait venir de Londres cinquante exemplaires qu’on a distribués des mains royales aux principaux magistrats et généraux de l’armée, elle a voulu que les passages les plus importants fussent insérés dans les journaux pour en donner connaissance au peuple haytien, particulièrement aux habitants des campagnes.’ Ibid., 6–7: ‘Elle [sa majesté] vous rend le témoignage flatteur que vous êtes le seul d’entre les Européens qui avez eu le courage de dire la vérité sans

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crainte, de vous attirer la haine des méchants: aussi vous avez acquis des droits à l’estime, à l’amitié de mon souverain, nouveau Las Casas.’ Ibid., 5–6: ‘Etre témoin de notre prospérité intéresse, vous verriez un peuple sous un gouvernement stable, juste et paternel se livrer tout entier à ses plus chers intérêts. L’art militaire sur qui repose notre conservation poussé à son plus haut période, nos mœurs s’épurant de jour en jour, l’agriculture honorée et protégée, enfin, vous verriez la pratique des vertus sociales, et vous auriez la douce satisfaction de vous convaincre des grandes vérités et des maximes sublimes qui sont contenues dans vos ouvrages!’ Antoine Métral, ‘De la littérature haïtienne,’ Revue Encyclopédique (Paris/London) 1 (March 1819), 524–37, and 3–4 (1819–20), 132–49; here vol. 1, 526–7: ‘Ces progrès dans la civilisation avaient été annoncés d’avance par M. l’Evêque Grégoire, dans son livre sur la littérature des Noirs, ouvrage rempli de recherches neuves et savantes. L’auteur avait prouvé que les Noirs sont des hommes, que ces hommes ont de l’intelligence, que cette intelligence est capable des opérations les plus difficiles; en effet, il n’est aucun genre de connaissances qui n’ait été cultivé par eux avec succès. Leur esprit s’est élevé jusqu’aux idées les plus sublimes de la poésie et de l’éloquence, il est descendu jusques dans les abstractions les plus profondes de la métaphysique; mais, ces Noirs isolés, qui relevaient une race long-temps flétrie, n’étaient encore que des plantes étrangères transplantées ça et là parmi des nations civilisées. Aujourd’hui, c’est ce qu’ils ont fait et peuvent faire en corps de nation qu’il importe de considérer.’ Ibid., vol. 1, 138: ‘Une nation chez laquelle tous les arts sont au berceau, ne peut avoir des ouvrages complets d’histoire: esclave hier, aujourd’hui libre, quels tableaux du passé peut-elle tracer pour l’avenir? Cependant, ces hommes que l’on plaçait à côté de la brute, ont déjà pour l’histoire de riches matériaux. Les noirs dans l’esclavage étaient bien différents de ce qu’ils sont devenus par la liberté. Leurs usages, leurs mœurs, leur esprit, leur cœur, leur caractère, leur langage, leurs haines, leurs affections se retrouvent surtout dans leurs écrits historiques; on peut les diviser en quatre classes: correspondance, mémoires ou relations, notices biographiques, et journaux.’ See on this point our book, La Conquête de l’espace public colonial: Prises de position et formes de participation d’écrivains et d’intellectuels africains dans la presse coloniale en Afrique Occidentale Française (1884–1960) (Paris and Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 2003). On this point, see also the conclusion of Métral’s article on the rise of Haitian literature and fine arts (at p. 48): ‘Quand un peuple naissant montre tant d’amour et de dispositions pour les lettres, que ne doit-on pas espérer de sa destinée? Les lettres sont l’âme de la civilisation; sans elles, les nations

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restent ignorantes et barbares, et avec elles leur gloire retentit parmi les générations futures. Ainsi, le monde offrira pour la première fois le spectacle d’hommes noirs, naguères sauvages ou abrutis, arrachés de leur terre natale, traînés en servitude au-delà de l’Océan, brisant leurs fers, formant un peuple nouveau, appelant au milieu d’eux les beaux-arts, et les cultivant avec un succès dont la postérité pourra s’étonner. La nation haïtienne peut se promettre un avenir d’autant plus brillant, qu’elle se trouve placée dans le nouveau monde, où les arts de l’Europe doivent se transplanter et chercher peut-être un asile.’

nine

The Intolerable Other MA D E L YN G U TW IRT H

The eighteenth century’s most entrancing fantasy of cultural and gender alterity combined an evanescent figure fashioned from the travel journals of Commerson, La Dixmarie, and Bougainville as the vahiné, the tawny-coloured Tahitian woman emerging like Botticelli’s Venus from the seas to offer herself to the European voyager. To quote that twentiethcentury traveller, Victor Ségalen, ‘the vahiné is absorbed by desire.’ Her ‘reality, her secret, lies in her silence.’ And not for a moment, ‘does she belong to herself.’1 Ségalen’s reflection seems to suggest a transgeographic, transhistorical phenomenon within the psyche of the European male voyager. What Commerson, La Dixmarie, Bougainville, and Ségalen have in common is the fantasy of the exotic woman as unproblematic sexual partner, an antidote to the verbal and active woman of France or of the West, the promise of a far-off island incarnation of Watteau’s evanescent rococo dream of the voyage to Cythera. The problem explored here is the paradox of speaking about women, especially in texts of cultural displacement from the West, in the context of the Enlightenment’s discourses concerning tolerance. Situating that epoch’s view of women on the map of tolerance, conceived of as forbearance towards the cultures and beliefs of others, provides us with a specific conundrum: how, if at all, did women figure as agents of toleration, as believers, or as bearers of an otherness to which toleration might be considered an apposite policy? The eighteenth century’s impulse to pose the issue of exotic alterity through female personae offers a ready site for consideration of toleration’s place in these schemas. Consequently, in this attempt to discern something of the French Enlightenment’s disposition of the concept of

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toleration as it relates to its ideas concerning women, after a brief survey of the problem presented by this rapprochement of the geographically remote Other with the female, I assay its implications in three ‘exotic’ works: Voltaire’s tragedy, Zaïre; Marivaux’s playlet, La Colonie; and Staël’s short story, Mirza.

Toleration and Silence Since the Enlightenment’s concern for tolerance was preoccupied above all with issues of freedom of religion and of conscience, and secondarily with a growing (but still rudimentary) scepticism concerning the ‘naturalness’ of national and ethnic differences, it seems scarcely necessary to press the point that the philosophes rarely discussed women as a class deserving of tolerance. And yet women were, par excellence, the largest tolerated class of them all, allowed existence, necessarily; but an existence relative to an enunciated absolute male standard. As literary historian Jean Mesnard has written, ‘that which is tolerable is always so with respect to whatever exists as of right.’ Mesnard goes on to stress that tolerance involves behaviour even more fundamentally than it does thought. ‘Tolerance allows others to exist,’ he points out, ‘but does not legitimate this right.’2 This perspective enables us to envisage gender accommmodations historically as an embattled consensus among men that women of their own culture, although irremediably Other and frequently reminded of their alterity, had to be tolerated. Certainly the language of some definitions of tolerance, like that of Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue française of 1882, while it does not refer explicitly to women, yet manages to conjure up aspects of the sex war’s condemnation of women as intractably lesser and morally deficient, as it describes tolerance as ‘condescendence, an indulgence respecting sin, and for what cannot be prevented.’ Of course the most celebrated and daring interrogation by an Enlightenment thinker of the relationship of the (exotic) Other to masculine cultural imperatives lies in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721). Here the problem is revealed in the tangled discrepancies between claims about universal human traits and presumptions of female alterity. As Oscar Kenshur has commented, the voyager Usbek appeals to universal reason when speaking as a philosopher, but ‘compartmentalizes,’ and appeals ‘to narrow religious taboos when talking about the politics of the seraglio,’ and is amazed when his universalist principles are taken up by a rebellious wife, Roxane, who uses them ‘to legitimate her violation of the

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chastity taboo and her violent actions against the eunuchs enforcing Usbek’s authority.’3 Montesquieu displaced this rebellion of the Other to Persia so as to render its subversion ludicrously exotic, an instance of Eastern tyranny and excess, hence inapplicable (while yet remaining piquantly applicable) to the French context. And Roxane’s revolt, even though she herself is (explosively) allowed to ascribe its cause to the deprivation of her freedom, is inevitably played out by the work’s plot line as nothing more than a protest against repressive sexual mores, so insistently are women’s persons sexualized by the conventions of Western discourse.4 Kenshur features as epigraph to his Chapter 2, Rosalie Colie’s observation that in the Enlightenment (as well as the Reformation, of course) ‘religion was the language into which political questions were cast, and men believed in their religions.’5 John Locke would allude to the desirability of mutual toleration of private persons differing from one another in religion.6 Insofar as women were private beings, they might at times be considered as conscientious members of a community of belief; yet their personhood, both civil and religious, remained only partial, subsumed under paternal and husbandly tutelage.7 François de Fontette, our contemporary, affirms that ‘tolerance implies, on the part of the tolerant party, a consciousness of superiority.’8 Fontette in fact recounts a telling story on himself: when his assembled family heard he had been asked to contribute to a discussion of the sources of tolerance, they all burst into uproarious laughter. Well, he wondered, am I, then, not tolerant? His children told him that yes, he was tolerant, but mostly when people agreed with him, while his wife strove to explain his attacks of ill-humoured apparent intolerance as merely the consecrated grumpy style of the traditional paterfamilias (383). Tolerance seemed still, at the twentieth century’s end, to be defined in many milieus by what father decided it should be. Despite our latter-day intimations of links among gender relations, power relations, and the idea of toleration, it is certain that the eighteenth century perceived these links but intermittently, at least as far as its written traces allow us to judge. In Edmé Romilli’s article on tolerance in the Encyclopédie, only two of the four principles he finds essential to a definition of tolerance could conceivably be applied to the class of women: first, the golden rule, and second, the idea that truth being subjective, individuals ought never adduce their own reasoning alone as sufficient ground for the establishment of rules of conduct.9 The idea that truth claims analogous to those proposed by religious beliefs might be

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made by, or on behalf of, women, although advanced by thinkers like Poullain de la Barre, Condorcet, and a number of lesser-known figures of both sexes, remained a somewhat shameful minority view, easily mocked to scorn. So it is in literary texts, more particularly in those that italicize women’s otherness by placing it in some imaginary extra-European context, that we best perceive how profoundly the Enlightenment, in its style of delineating sexual difference, disconnected itself from its own notion of tolerance. Julia Douthwaite, in her searching work Exotic Women, expresses the view that, in addition to their presentation of an ‘outer-directed discourse aiming to control and dominate non-European peoples,’ the mass of works on exoticism contains an ‘inner-directed discourse which masks the (male) controller’s secret fears of losing his powers, as well as his sexual anxieties, self-loathing and apprehension of religious, class or national difference.’10 In such works, a female figure, she argues, can be ‘a highly charged symbol capable of unveiling some of the blind spots in Enlightenment thought’ (3). Her study concludes that the heroines in these novels often tend to ‘represent morally questionable traits,’ such as ‘infidelity, sexual precocity and guile,’ traits, we might add, that generally present the female Other as intolerably deficient in consistency or conscience, qualities prerequisite to any practice of toleration (18). Conceptualizations of gender of course fall relentlessly into facile dichotomies, and the Enlightenment is no exception. Its dominant view of gender remained tenaciously essentialist, even while other divisions within society began to receive a relativist treatment. That is, it often viewed women and men as so dissimilar that they might virtually be of different species altogether, as in the title of the German Valens Acidalius’s tract, originally published in 1595 (a translation appearing in France in 1744), entitled Paradoxe sur les femmes où l’on tâche de prouver qu’elles ne sont pas du genre humain. In the nature versus culture quarrel, woman would be primarily assigned the pole of nature and man culture’s domain.11 Yet complications inevitably creep into this simplistic split. Although woman is generally seen as more ‘natural’ than man, and not fully integrated into society by his culture, the utopian idealization of some extra-European societies like that of Tahiti as being ‘gentler’ ones tended to lend them, as cultures, a certain ‘feminized,’ more sexually expressed superiority: within them, the imperative of pleasure, a positive feature for the philosophes, was viewed as receiving a recognition withheld from the life of the senses in the West. Yet, in the dichotomy pitting reason against nature, woman, insofar as she is seen as a representation

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of nature, might therefore frequently find herself allegorized as a figure of unreason, or fanaticism, the very converse of tolerance.12 In such embodiments, woman is usually depicted, as in Voltaire’s Histoire d’un bon bramin, as past her sexual prime, a crone like that ‘vieille Indienne, bigote, imbécile, et assez pauvre’ who is incapable of asking even the most primitive of questions concerning her fate.13 Woman’s rationality, and consequently her ability to process questions of conscience, remains decidedly moot for the Enlightenment, which exalts this ostensibly masculine quality, virtually to the empyrean. Nevertheless, non-fictive French accounts of far-off places rather put into question Western notions of reason and of licit sexual mores. Often these narratives use the sexual relationship as a touchstone of judgment for or against a culture. Buffon, for example, based his harsh judgment against American Indians on their presumed lack of feeling for their women. ‘They lack all love for their female and in consequence, for all their own kind. This indifference to the [female] sex is the original sin that withers nature, prevents it from flowering, and in its very act of destroying the seeds of life, cuts society off at its root.’14 Buffon’s statement is peculiarly emblematic of Enlightenment thinking about women. It is unambiguously conceived as from the masculine side, with regard both to Europeans and to Americans: no idea of female reciprocity or agency is raised by his formulation. And yet, sentimentally, it insists that man’s amorous bond to woman provides the cement for a well-organized society. Insofar as it equates a lack of regard for women with a failure of feeling (hence too a breach of toleration) for all others, Buffon’s view appears to be egalitarian in principle. However, sexual relations, as we find them in the texts of other philosophes, especially Rousseau, bear this curiously huge burden of emotional baggage: excoriated when unsatisfactory as ruinous to the social fabric, they, along with the distaff sex invariably associated with them, remain peculiarly unamenable to rational critique, providing instead occasions for emotional outbursts.15 Buffon, reproving what he views as the defectively ‘natural’ sexual mores of an inferior culture, implicitly commends the ostensibly warmer, more fully realized, progressive and egalitarian sentiments of European man as against the coldness and insensibility of the native American. In so doing, he is motivated by a somewhat ‘feminist’ impulse, since what he reproves is the bestial treatment of woman as mere instrument of sexuality, an attitude repugnant to the manifest moral professions of his class and of the Church. In Buffon’s quite conventional view, European women, by virtue of the greater regard in which they are held by their

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men, transcend mere tolerability to become revered mother-wives and companions. They are thus transported to a ‘higher’ plane of being, one whose inhabitants exist beyond the domain of mere toleration reserved for males of other nations or religious convictions. And thus Buffon reveals yet another aspect of the problem. Even as he exalts European mores over those of the more ‘natural’ native Americans, although ostensibly in a far more rational vein than La Dixmarie, he too illustrates male longing for a sexuality in harmony with both desire and social order, one in which women would remain acquiescent receivers of their prescribed role. The eulogists for Tahiti, of course, claim this is precisely what they have found. One of the interlocutors in Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville makes the inherent East-West comparison as he affirms that the Venus of Athens has nothing at all in common with the Venus of Tahiti. The former, the Venus of Europe, is a flirt; while the latter, given over entirely to her natural desires and those of her lovers, is a generous, easily accessible, fertile goddess.16 This emphasis on fertility, I would claim, is Diderot’s populationist rationalization for his underlying sympathy with an order pervaded by desire rather than by its repression. The fantasy of Tahiti as erotic utopia nevertheless has some intriguing points of convergence with the end of the eighteenth century’s dream of a pastoral, moral family life like that envisaged by Buffon, in which women, absorbed by a fantasized fulfilment in maternity, would find contentment in domestic sexual acquiescence.17 Indeed, critic Lise LeibacherOuvrard has convincingly argued that the Enlightenment’s preoccupation with the discovery of an exotic paradise owes its origin less to longing for an original Eden than to the search for a new past that would substitute for and desacralize biblical myths of origin, tainted with the sexual repressiveness of original sin.18 The dream of unfettered female sexual accessibility, then, looms as a daunting barrier against the Enlightenment’s ability to entertain the idea of women’s parity or equality. In this fantasy, female desire plays an ambiguous role. Sometimes, as in Commerson, Bougainville, and especially La Dixmarie, it is celebrated, and even vaunted as proving the superiority of Tahitian over French culture.19 A tacit awareness of women’s relative sexual victimization in France (the reverse of what we find in Buffon, who argues Frenchwomen’s relative privilege) is plainly admitted by such treatments. But women’s active sexuality, although so often more candidly acknowledged in the French than in other European traditions, is also often seen as a bestial force, as we observe in Vol-

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taire’s suggestion in Candide that girls have been known to grant sexual favours willingly to monkeys.20 As Marie-Hélène Huet reminds us in her work on theories concerning the effects of maternal fantasy on the conception of monstrous infants, theological and medical tradition had frequently combined to tell a story of the female sexual organ, endowed with powers of enchantment, yet hiding within it ‘a sulfurous pit’ that ‘tricks the senses and reason.’ She argues that women in the literature she culls are seen as joining ‘within themselves seduction and repulsion, life and disease, contamination and abjection.’21 The masculine learned tradition, while challenging entrenched theological views, continued to project traditionalist tropes of its own sexual anxieties on the other gender. Hence the immense appeal of imaginary flight from this irremediably Other, deeply flawed, European mate. The Chevalier de Méré can be called in at this point to represent the element of worldly ambivalence and awareness concerning European sexual mores. In two sets of letters, one between a young chevalier and a marquis, the other between the chevalier and a marquise, Méré sets forth the limits of discourse about women for aristocratic libertine men, while expanding those limits through the use of his putative female letter writer.22 In the exclusively masculine correspondence, the chevalier seeks to wise up his idealistic young correspondent who still hopes to meet up with friendship, wit, and virtue in the woman he loves. The chevalier advises his mentee not to feel he has to tell women the truth (32), not to be overconcerned with their sexual needs (34), and in general to ‘abandon the solid for the pursuit of the agreeable,’ as the fashions of his times decree he should. Yet paradoxically, the chevalier also demonstrates the deep ambivalence of Enlightenment thinkers as he avers that it is absurd to think women inferior. ‘The same principles animate them,’ he tells the younger man, as do us: ‘they have the same inclinations as we do and the same vices.’ In fact they are superior to us, he avers (94). This of course is the trap: within a conception of toleration lies an implicit assumption, if not of equality, at least of parity. The Other’s beliefs and being are accorded a degree of legitimacy, if not quite validation. But the Enlightenment’s discourse of gender constantly teeters between female inadequacy and female superiority: the scales swing wildly up and down, and, in male writings, generous words of understanding of the other sex are consistently undercut by commonplace warnings against sexual deception. Méré’s marquise is allowed to arraign men: ‘What! Just because you are more ambitious, cruel, and mean than we,

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you’ve abused the goodness of our hearts in oppressing us, and you think yourselves beings more perfect than we!’ (15). But the marquise too, like Laclos’s Merteuil after her, falls with astonishing ease into a language of female superiority. She is made to write, ‘You can never resist that inner impulse that tells you that you were made to crawl, while we were made to command. What poor creatures you are!’ (13). The sense of irremediable enmity and struggle between the sexes surfaces, therefore, as soon as the ostensible Other speaks up. Yet Méré empowers his marquise to complain piercingly of the manifest intolerance of the ambient misogyny: ‘Our prudence is seen by men as wiliness; our gentleness as weakness; our pity as hypocrisy; our thriftiness as avarice; our liberality as pride; in a word, to hear them talk, all our virtues are nothing but a perpetual disguise’ (94–5). In the end, the marquise, Méré’s spokeswoman, claims that there are but two kinds of love among men: a need for superiority over women, for ‘any honour shared,’ she argues, ‘is revolting to them’; or a genuine love, in which goodness and virtue would harmonize with society, not be at odds with it (95). The marquise has abandoned the search, since that second species of love is in such short supply; this the price she chooses to pay for her peace, and her dissident belief that ‘the mind and soul have no sex’ (127). The searchingness of Méré’s texts testifies to a far greater understanding among men of women’s situation than the dominant conventions of a misogynous rhetorical tradition generally allowed to surface. Such elements of feminist dissent, male or female, remained sufficiently muted so as never to create a serious challenge to the continuing pre-eminence of discourses of intimidation. It is woman such as we find her in Méré whose situation is often coded via antiphrase in works of so-called exoticism. As against the tiresomeness of the marquise’s plaints, we sometimes find magic dreams of female self-empowerment, sometimes dreams of silence and of plenitude formulated by male writers.23 Both provide relief from the nastiness of the ambient sexual code. A striking aspect of some works of so-called exoticism is their lack of local colour, their scorn of any attempt to situate the new place in its hues, smells, and tastes, an absence that further signals to the reader that they are really concerned not with the foreign, but rather with the domestic scene.24 An example of this can be found in Carle Vanloo’s twin paintings of 1755, of a sultana working at her embroidery in a seraglio, and of the same sultana accepting a cup of coffee from the hands of a negress.25 Vanloo’s work proffers no suggestion of verisimilitude beyond the costumery, which in any case might well have been adopted by Parisian ladies for their adventures in dépaysement.

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The abstractly featured sultana, looking like a rococo doll (said to have been modelled by la Pompadour), is attended by ladies quite as uncharacterized and Western as she. These works of ostensible imagination suffer from a genuine failure of vision of, or interest in, Otherness in all its raw sexual and cultural challenge.

Some Fictions of Toleration Voltaire’s Zaïre (1732), represents an attempt to situate a religious crisis ostensibly in the persona of a woman of the Orient; but this woman, like the sultana-Pompadour, is revealed to be a daughter of France, indeed, the daughter of a Crusader named Lusignan. The alien Other is thus erased before abandonment to the same, and the issue of difference evaded. The unfortunate Zaïre, chosen from among the harem’s number by the sultan Orosmane as his most beloved, has lived for some years as a Christian slave turned Muslim in his court in Jerusalem. Over time, she has come to love this monarch passionately. But alas, her brother Nérestan arrives to plead with her to intercede with her lover for the lives of Orosmane’s Christian prisoners, among whom is Lusignan. The amorous sultan accedes to Zaïre’s pleas and liberates Lusignan as well as the others, but he seethes with increasing jealousy against Nérestan, whom he mistakenly believes to be Zaïre’s lover. Nérestan, revolted by his sister’s love for the Muslim, insists on her submission to baptism and flight with him. Zaïre thus suffers the suspicions of both her lover and her brother, and in a jealous rage, Orosmane kills her, only to learn too late Nérestan’s true identity.26 Of course we realize that Voltaire wishes with this play to relativize religious bigotry by illustrating the tyranny not only of Orosmane, but of the relentless Christians, whose unreasonable demands on Zaïre bring about the tragic conclusion. The work also speaks to the plasticity of human nature: brought up in the seraglio, Zaïre has none of the loyalties or beliefs of her Christian clan, and has simply donned another identity, much as she would a new robe. But the gothic nature of this play, its sense of the entrapment of Zaïre as innocent victim of conflicting forces, is made possible by her ambiguous identity: woman’s status as standing outside all systems of belief, while yet remaining subject to their anathemas. Her brother views her as an infidel (465), and in truth, she quails at looking him in the eye (477). We witness to the full Zaïre’s inferiority as a being of conscience as her brother berates her for betraying ‘her’ God. She stands accused before her aged father, who covers

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her with reproaches for tolerating the approach of the men who massacred her mother and her brothers. Daughter of a lineage of Christian heroes, she cannot be allowed to turn against her heritage. She must affirm, whatever her ignorance and doubts, that she is a Christian: he demands, and dutifully she obeys. We observe that Zaïre can be appealed to only on the basis of blood ties (like Antigone or the Eumenides), as she is when solicited by her father and brother, or of desire, as she is by Orosmane. Both vulnerabilities render her an appropriately helpless and feminine tragic victim, lacking core beliefs of her own to sustain her or make her appear other than disempowered by her connections to others. Even more than Corneille’s Chimène or Racine’s Phèdre, Zaïre weeps endless tears in every scene in which she appears. The factor that supremely sears her plight with futility is her active desire: as Voltaire portrays her, her sexual longing for Orosmane stands as surrogate for love of God in her psyche. Her open professions of love, so at odds with the sexual reticence enjoined on Christian women, render Zaïre a species of vahiné, as they permeate her figure with the aura of desire. It is this superabundance of passion that the play punishes, demanding that she extinguish it with the waters of baptism which would force her to renounce her claim to sexual fulfilment. It must be stressed that this hugely popular work, Voltaire’s most celebrated play, was performed before audiences who had generally enjoyed no choice of marital partners, and whose freedom of desire was hedged by moral repressiveness, however they may ultimately have lived their lives. Hence the cathartic powers of this heroine’s plight. Zaïre, discovering that her love is a crime, finds herself in a hostile universe only too ready to abandon her. Her brother berates her for her willing suspension of selfhood, asking her why the estate of slave fails to revolt her, why the lure of freedom has so little purchase upon her spirit (951–2). Revolted, then, by her ‘odious’ struggles, she turns her hopes towards Christianity, which the Christians claimed provided a far more congenial status to women than did Islam: perhaps in its embrace she might come to enjoy some degree of choice. In her most celebrated soliloquy, she asks herself what on earth she is: French or Muslim? Lusignan’s daughter or Orosmane’s wife? Lover or Christian? In all of these identities, she is herself but relative to others. Only in her passion for Orosmane does she appear at all free, to the extent, we might add, that a Christian slave girl in a seraglio could be said to freely choose to love or not to love the sultan. Zaïre, as we would now put it, suffers the throes of an identity crisis.

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But if we wish to understand how conscience, toleration, and love interact for eighteenth-century women, it is essential to think about the place of male desire in this drama. Orosmane is so abjectly smitten with Zaïre that he abjures the cruel rule of the seraglio for her sake. He is given to us as a generous and enlightened prince. Nevertheless, what feeds his passion for the Zaïre whom he intends to make his wife is the spectacle of her dismay and weakness: ‘Que j’aime à triompher de ce tendre embarras! / Qu’il redouble ma flamme et mon bonheur!’ (937–8). Orosmane’s desire floods the scene, making Zaïre unfreeable, even to life as a Christian. Suspicion, as in Othello’s tale artfully fostered by a courtier, readily transforms the sultan’s passionate love to rage. The play proceeds to manufacture a contingency, ostensibly for the sake of its tragic outcome, a secret wholly unnecessary but for its role as provocative agent, ensuring that the lovers will never be reconciled: Zaïre is enjoined to remain silent concerning her relationship to Nérestan, thus preventing her from telling the truth of their kinship, and forcing her to become Orosmane’s victim. With the plot thus rigged up, the play proceeds to revel in Zaïre’s incapacity. As she swears fealty to the sole belief she professes, her love for Orosmane, he, unable to trust her, rails at her female perfidy (1310) and perjury (1375). Now he views her as nothing but false. Of course we viewers and readers know this not to be so, but Orosmane kills her for a perfidiousness that falls all too readily into long entrenched ideas about women. For those to whom tolerance was an increasingly prized and necessary value, Zaïre, member of the subspecies woman, had been brought in from the Holy Land to serve as an object lesson. Subject massively to the patriarchal pressures of others while wishing to live only for love, she serves as a touching but cruel reminder of the fact that in the realm of conviction, eighteenth-century woman was but a cipher whose beliefs could only be subsidiary to her familial and amorous relationships.27 My second test case text is that of Marivaux’s La Colonie. Although unpublished until mid-century, it dates from 1729, the heyday of galanterie. In fact, this little comedy that plays with the issue of female emancipation opens with a divertissement altogether in the gallant manner: a singer, embroidering on the theme that woman’s lot is one of servitude and/or dominance, begs women not to complain of men’s laws overmuch, since ‘you put chains on those who rule you, and your masters are your subjects’ (395). This chaffingly decorative frame presents the embracing rococo fiction that women, and Venus, rule the world. This

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frame is itself questioned by the actual playlet, which exposes the paradox of speaking of women’s rights within the emprisoning verbiage of a mock courtliness that undermines intention. 28 La Colonie belongs in this survey, not because it presents an exotic culture, for its dramatis personae are unrelievedly French, but because its action is placed on an island where there has presumably been a break with French law and custom. Consequently, it toys with ideas of a fresh start and newly defined gender roles. As with Defoe’s island and later Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s, Marivaux’s island at least starts out as a gentler world in the making. The circumstances and opportunity are so remarkable that the shipwrecked women even believe they may be effective in recreating the world to their own liking. The aristocratic Arthenice and the bourgeoise Mme Sorbin reject class division and make common cause to throw off the ‘absurd humility that has been imposed upon us ever since the world began.’ Unlike the pathetic Zaïre, incapable of conviction, Arthenice and Mme Sorbin fairly reek of conviction – even to the point of absurdity, so incongruous does that quality appear in woman. So when the latter claims on the very first page, officiously referring to herself in the third person, ‘Mme Sorbin wants to live in history and not just in society,’ we chuckle at her pretension. Not unlike the ridicule directed at twentieth-century feminists, La Colonie mocks the women’s solidarity and their wish to separate themselves from men so as to be able to consider their own needs and create a power bloc capable of giving their demands credibility. Tired of having the other sex make laws for them, the women offer to assist the men in creating legislation for their new state. The reaction of the men is foreordained: they just laugh. Laughter lends a veneer of amiable tolerance to the tyrant, who gives himself a good conscience thereby. Sorbin merely says his wife is out of her mind, and in masculine complicity, the nobleman Timagène, for all his greater surface courtliness, agrees. In fact, all serious discourse from the women’s side is dismissed by the men as speechifying. But Arthenice, uncowed, insists that since they have been deposited pell-mell on this island by shipwreck, no one has a prima facie right to rule, and that since one needs rulers, laws must be made. Naturally, Timagène replies, that’s precisely what the men are ready to set about doing. The women are outraged at not even being heard, while the men reject any need to listen. Marivaux picks up on the incongruity of the men’s and the women’s opposed perceptions: the men simply deny there is a problem if the women suggest there is one; whereas the women, attempting to speak out

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on their own behalf, cannot persuade the men of the validity of their point of view. Tradition, carried intact by the men from their previous existence, buttresses their assumptions, of course: ‘de père en fils,’ from father to son, men have always made the laws without consulting women. The mere suggestion of female parity outrages them, whereas the women assume a relative likeness between the sexes as a matter of course. In excluding the women, the men relegate them to an extracultural status that provides them no purchase from which to initiate change. Here enters love: Persinet, a man of the people, is in love with the Sorbins’ daughter, Lina. The imperious Arthenice (a name surely imported from preciosity to reinforce the silliness of upper-class feminine pretension) urges Mme Sorbin to send this young man packing, for women must no longer have any truck with men. Eros is set squarely in opposition to women’s aspirations. Guess which will win out? Lina makes it clear that she, for one, is not ready to turn against men, and especially not Persinet. But her mother, like one of Molière’s instinct-denying fathers, officiously commands her: ‘I forbid you to love’ (407). Abetted by her desire, Lina insists that she and her lover can never desire any but the same thing, but her mother urges her to stay with the women so as to learn a better sense of her own ‘importance,’ a note that the text still processes as comical. The assemblage of women is itself a notion intrinsically ludicrous here, and their language of mutual devotion, their solidarity, and their drive to relieve the suffering of their sex rings as ridiculous. Arthenice’s vow to sacrifice her life to the glory of her sex is itself an absurdity, since, as we’ve seen in Zaïre, the idea of a woman’s conviction is an oxymoron to public opinion in general. Serious consideration of a category of woman as distinct from that of mankind – this the donnée with which the play toys – is returned to laughability and stasis. A further resort to the comic here lies in the pretension to military posturing assumed by the women, who pretentiously usurp the rhetoric of battle and of military hierarchy as they plot their actions. Arthenice, for example, coughs and spits ostentatiously as she addresses her forces, mimicking stock gestures of authority of the male sex. Yet, withal, a little miracle takes place in Scene IX of this one-act play, as the women’s complaints become concrete and pathos momentarily takes over. Here Arthenice asserts that men refuse justice to women and have forgotten that they do so. And when she remonstrates that women are not even acknowledged to have common sense, a member of the crowd agrees, and grouses about the messages men always convey to them: ‘You’re not good for anything, don’t get mixed up in anything,

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you’re only any good when you’re quiet.’ That’s what they told our mothers, who believed them, they ruefully conclude, and we gave in like sheep. What’s more, Arthenice decries how men have stifled women’s minds and prevented them from being employed for anything more demanding than spinning. She even scores as she makes the final accusation, that is, that the only thing women are permitted the appearance of reigning over is lovemaking: ‘c’est à régner dans la bagatelle, c’est à n’être nous-mêmes que la première des bagatelles’ (414). Women’s place in sexuality is their downfall. Even so, it is precisely the language of love, of gallantry, that returns the play to its joking mood after this brief, disquieting spell of pathos. Now the women credulously repeat all the gallant absurdities they have been told to render them sexually acquiescent: their souls are superior to men’s, they are prodigious, wonderful, divine. The stubborn Arthenice offers a last telling arraignment: men’s ‘reason has never bestowed anything but insults upon us.’ But hers is a lost cause: the women, inattentive to her best arguments, remain entranced by their sexual attractiveness. Young Persinet, a male acolyte of the women, made generous by his love for Lina, actually goes to plead with the men to accord half of their power to the women, warning that otherwise, Lysistrata-like, the women might withhold themselves from them and the human race perish. The nobleman Hermocrate simply dismisses Persinet, as he refuses categorically to see anything but comedy in this appeal. For Hermocrate, the women’s demands are mere ‘screechings’ (424). Yet Arthenice persists: what governments lack, she claims, are precisely the wisdom and skills of half of humankind. She gives the men an ultimatum: an agreement to collaborate, to be accepted in one hour, or separation. And there the comedy Marivaux has so courageously constructed gets stuck, bailing itself out only with the arrival of violent savages against whom battle has to be waged. War preserves male supremacy, as the men assume the defence of the island, and laughter returns as Hermocrate astutely pushes the artistocratic Arthenice and the bourgeoise Mme Sorbin into a cat-fight: class war ruins their solidarity. All returns to the status quo, as Timagène reassures the ladies that ‘we will take care of your rights in the customs we will establish.’ Marivaux’s totally unpopular comedy, which failed in its initial version and was not produced again until modern times, puts into play a rehearsal of a female revolt that has been associated with the one that takes place in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters.29 Its fate testifies to the rank intolerance of the French theatrical public for a presentation, even so conventionally comical a one as this, of issues of female equity. Marivaux

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pandered to his public (or perhaps, on the whole, agreed with it) in posing the women’s claims to equality before the law as ludicrously challenging sexual instinct – the love of Persinet and Lina. The very utterance of such claims, recognized by the play as widely if mutteringly espoused by an inarticulate segment of society, male and female, challenges the inherent ‘logic’ of male supremacy. It is significant that Marivaux resorts to introducing a sort of aristocratic patriarch, a pre-Sarastro, at the very end of his little play, so as to lend its men extra ballast. For in fact, his comedy, in its unwonted toleration of the women’s speech, teeters dangerously toward their position at moments. Only the weight of tradition can anchor it to some species of comic resolution. What Carroll SmithRosenberg has written about discourses of freedom applies here: such discourses may be ‘confining when they promise to empower and empowering when they seem most to confine. Containing resistance, they also produce it.’30 As the real colonialism flourishing all about Marivaux reveals, Western men carried their own illiberal notions of sexual relations with them wherever they set foot. But his play suggests that men had begun to suspect that these notions might be inadequate, perhaps even intolerable. To bring actual, rather than ventriloquized women’s voices into the equation, I turn to a walk through Germaine de Staël’s tale of 1786, Mirza. Douthwaite stresses that by the time of the French Revolution the foreign heroine has turned into ‘a figure used to demonstrate civilization’s dangers, to question Eurocentrism, and to justify a cultural relativism,’ intensifying a trend pursued throughout the century.31 Staël’s prerevolutionary work certainly operates in this way, but it is particularly intriguing to explore how women writing the exotic genre operated to revise its fundamental elements.32 Staël’s tale interrogates the limits on both women’s tolerability to the Other and on their ability to sustain personal beliefs. The story of Mirza is a brief one.33 The Senegalese Ximéo narrates it to a European traveller who, observing the African’s tragic mien, has been driven to inquire what his history has been. A prince of his tribe, Ximéo had been contentedly engaged to wed the young and lovely Ourika, for whom his family has destined him. But alas, out hunting one day in the forest, he hears an entrancing female voice, singing a song celebrating freedom. When he seeks the singer out, he turns Galatea to her Pygmalion: having herself been taught poetry and song by an old Frenchman, she teaches Ximéo the French language and, what is more singular, initiates him into her

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cult of liberty. Enchanted by her arts, Ximéo declares his love to her, only to learn that she is Mirza, a princess of the Jaloffe tribe, traditional enemies of his own people. But Mirza, enamoured of her independence, hesitates to accept his love. She makes Ximéo swear he is promised to no other before she consents to be his lover. He deceives her by affirming his lack of ties. A spell of ecstatic fulfilment ensues, as he stays with her in the forest. But finally Ximéo remembers his family and his pledge to Ourika, and telling Mirza that he must go home briefly to his tribe, promises to return. Once he has regained his ancestral home, Ximéo’s family loyalties press him to respect his union with Ourika. When, in a subsequent battle against the Jaloffes, he is gravely wounded, Mirza appears before his dwelling each morning to pray for his recovery. After slave merchants conquer his people, Ximéo is about to be sold. Suddenly Mirza appears to offer herself in his place, prepared to lose for his sake the freedom of which she had sung in the forest. This scene so moves the governor of Senegal that he orders them both to be set free: but Mirza pierces her heart with an arrow, protesting that Ximéo, whom Ourika loves, must survive, while she, unloved, no longer feels a need to live. With her last breath she enjoins on her lover a life of service to others and of permanent mourning for her shade. In essence, Mirza constitutes a sort of trial, in which the lovers are judged by the crowd witnessing the drama of love, emancipation, and suicide, then by the European traveller, and finally by us, as readers. Staël makes Ximéo the narrator, rather than the eloquent Mirza. It is as if she wished at all costs to illustrate how a masculine consciousness could be inflected by a woman such as Mirza. Only thus could her narrative possess any credence for a male reader, a male narrator inspiring infinitely more confidence in both women and men than a plaintive female, whose pathetic tale, no matter how searing, might bore and/or annoy. But in fact, it is Mirza’s genius that provides the surprise of this tale. Her grace, her wit, her glances, so enthrall Ximéo that he begs to be taken into her world, which he sees as so much more aware and more expressed than the world of his fathers. Only slowly does the enchantment lessen as he comes to believe that he admires more than he loves her (152). So Ximéo’s is not a deliberate, libertine cruelty like that which Méré’s chevalier recommends to his young friend, but only a betrayal, step by step, taken without rancour, but also without ultimate gravity. Mirza’s tale sets forth, in very lightly Senegalese garb, a heated indictment against the fate of superior women and their lot in love. The choice of the slave trade as its setting decidedly enhances the narrative’s call for

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an awareness of the need for female freedom. The exotic locale makes licit what would seem nearly demented in a European locale: unbridled female passion and ambition. Indeed, some might find racist its attribution of outsized passion to its heroine: virtually intolerable, one might say; certainly foolish and perhaps autobiographically self-serving. These are reactions against which we still labour. Staël risked ridicule with her tale, which submits to public attention in melodramatic relief the two conflicting elements in women’s struggle to achieve the level of true tolerability: their aspirations, and their desire for love. Mirza, with her cult of freedom to think and create, expresses conviction, the very quality Staël’s society believed inappropriate, even improper, and certainly beside the point in women. In other words, she fights a code that makes no space for women’s conscience. Staël liked to perform as Zaïre in amateur theatricals, and was therefore well aware of the void of conscience that besets Voltaire’s heroine. All of her own fictions, from Jane Grey to Corinne, depict heroines of conviction. But in Mirza, it is the heroine’s fealty to love, equal in her spirit to her beliefs, that defeats her. A particularity of this story, unique in Staël’s oeuvre, is its admission of an explicit reference to sexuality; for Mirza and Ximéo become lovers without any doubt, and Mirza succumbs to her own desire. But Staël’s subsequent heroines never enjoy this freedom, because the increasingly rigid and moralistic sexual code of the day tabooed more than ever the open acknowledgement of sexual desire by women.34 An avowedly sexually expressive woman could only be either a wicked or a profane one. In writing Mirza, Staël resorts to a subterfuge sometimes found in women’s as well as men’s writings: in a turnabout of the role of the vahiné, she presents Ximéo as a male sprite. His character offers a vision of accommodating male desire, which allows the woman’s sexual expression to be forgiven. The Senegalese locale also frees Staël, not only to speak of freedom for women behind the more acceptable facade of opposition to slavery, but also to use the European topos of the oversexed woman of colour positively, to convey sexual longing in a more integrated way than the use of a French setting would allow. Staël’s still ignorant exoticism (she fails to localize her tale with anything more than a sort of pigeonFrench style of speech) yet attributes universal characteristics, like a love of freedom, to the African Other. In Mirza’s passionate persona, devotion to love and to freedom are indissociable. Her cultured mind is informed by natural impulse. It is that generosity of heart that the bienséances demanded of a heroine, however, that renders her vulnerable. As in Marivaux’s Colonie, woman’s aspiration can be made visible only if it is

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seen as incompatible with sexual love. Even as Staël struggles against this construct, she remains imprisoned by its assumptions, those of the Enlightenment’s sexual Weltanschauung. Mme de Lambert, earlier in the century, had recommended to her daughter that she shun all lively pleasures, not go often to the theatre, formulate only reasonable desires that were within her reach, and be wary of her imagination. ‘Men like us when we are humiliated,’ she concluded.35 She thus recapitulated the repressive wisdom concerning women associated with tradition and embodied in Orosmane. The French Revolution, although it did but little to improve women’s status, could not help but alter the rhetoric of liberation, and hence the reach of toleration. In 1801, Fanny Raoul would publish her Opinion d’une femme sur les femmes (A Woman’s View of Women), which pitches far more aggressively than would have been possible before the Revolutionary upheavals, an attack on those advocates of tolerance, the philosophes. Raoul speaks with deep conviction the language of political reform, seemingly unaware that literary art’s use of exotic otherness had already made some of the very connections she makes here, although she addresses cruder historical realities. She couches her speech in tones that, for their anger and candour, would have been impossible before the Revolution, and that would soon enough be once more foreclosed by the gender repressiveness of the Napoleonic Code. It is remarkable to see the philosophes’ hearts go out to the fate of individuals separated from them by an immense distance, whereas they do not deign to notice the misfortunes of those right under their noses; to see them proclaiming the freedom of negroes, and tightening the chains of their wives, whose slavery is, nonetheless, just as unjust as that of these wretched people. The idea of linking together women and Blacks might appear strange: but if this comparison is unusual, it is at least not devoid of accuracy. Are women not, like those unfortunates, sold by avaricious fathers to frequently inhuman tyrants; like them, aren’t women, despite their own inclinations, ripped from their family and their region to go off and vegetate on some foreign soil? Like them, frequently flight or death provides the only escape from their situation. Until quite recently, a man could shut his wife in, sequester her forever from the eyes of other people, without the unhappy victim of such dreadful despotism having any right to invoke any protective law to defend her rights or avenge their violation. And we say that we have laws and human justice! Yes, human, no doubt about it.36

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In seizing the rhetoric of freedom to express her own conscientious objections, Raoul displays a new-found courage to express a frustration with women’s condition heretofore given only periodic and nominal notice. Through the outspokenness of this small minority among women and their male allies, who, however waveringly and slowly began to risk intolerability in the eyes of the majority, women in general would find their own threshhold of toleration for their lot wearing slowly away. And that is the Enlightenment’s legacy to them.

Notes 1 Victor Ségalen, Un Voyage en Océanie (Paris: Seuil, 1980), as cited by Daniel Margueron in Tahiti dans toute sa littérature (Paris: Editions l’Harmattan, 1986), 140. I am much indebted to Julia Douthwaite’s Exotic Women (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), as can be seen in what follows, especially to her discussions of Philibert Commerson, ‘Sur la découverte de la nouvelle Isle de Cythère ou Tahiti’ Mercure de France (Nov. 1769), 196–207; Nicolas Bricaire de La Dixmarie, Le Sauvage de Tahiti aux Français, avec un envoi au philosophe ami des sauvages (London and Paris: LeJay, 1770); and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s Voyage autour du monde par la frégate du roi. See also Jacques Proust (ed.), La Boudeuse et la flûte ‘l’Etoile’ (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). Where several citations of a single work occur in proximity, I have listed the work in an initial footnote and subsequent citations in parenthetical text notes. 2 Jean Mesnard, Introduction to La Tolérance, XIIIe Colloque de l’Institut de Recherches sur les Civilisations de l’Occident (Paris: P.U.P.S., no. 11, 1986), 3–4. 3 Oscar Kenshur, Dilemmas of Enlightenment: Studies in the Rhetoric and Logic of Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 6. 4 ‘J’ai pu vivre dans la servitude, mais j’ai toujours été libre: j’ai réformé tes lois sur celles de la Nature, et mon esprit s’est toujours tenu dans l’indépendance.’ Lettre CLXI, in Montesquieu, Les Lettres persanes (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 334. 5 Kenshur, Dilemmas of Enlightenment, 47. 6 John Locke, Epistola de Tolerantia – A Letter on Toleration, ed. by Raymond Klibansky, trans. by J.W. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 81. 7 See Carol Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988) for discussion of the inadmissability of women to status as individuals susceptible of inclusion in the social contract in the political theory of the Enlightenment.

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8 François de Fontette, ‘Les Sources de l’idée de la tolérance,’ in Mesnard, La Tolérance, 383. 9 Edmé Romilli, cited in Jean de Viguerie, ‘La Tolérance à l’âge des lumières,’ in Mesnard, La Tolérance, 43. 10 Douthwaite, Exotic Women, 3, 18. David Williams’s study, ‘The Politics of Feminism in the French Revolution,’ in The Varied Pattern: Studies in the Eighteenth Century (Toronto: A.M. Hakkert, 1971), remains a useful resource. See also, Domna C. Stanton (ed.), The Defiant Muse: French Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1986), and Geneviève Fraisse (ed.), Opinions des femmes (Paris: Côté Femmes Editions, 1989), for some dissident female voices. For the quarrel during the Revolution, see Elisabeth Badinter’s Condorcet, Prudhomme, Guyomar – Paroles d’hommes (1790– 1793) (Paris: P.O.L., 1989). Also, Christine Fauré, Democracy without Women – Feminism and the Rise of Liberal Individualism in France, trans. by Claudia Gorbman and John Berks (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), ch. 4 and 5. 11 For these dichotomies, see esp. Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘Natural Facts: A Historical Perspective on Science and Sexuality,’ in C. MacCormack and M. Strathern (eds.), Nature, Culture and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), and Ludmilla Jordanova ‘Naturalizing the Family: Literature and the Bio-Medical Sciences,’ in Languages of Nature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), as well as Jean Bloch, ‘Women and the Reform of the Nation,’ in Eva Jacobs et al. (eds.), Woman and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Essays in Honour of John Stephenson Spink (London: Athlone, 1979). 12 See, e.g., my brief discussion in The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 330–1, of Gravelot and Cochin’s Iconologie’s Depictions of Licence, Disobedience, Indocility, Vengeance and Calumny (Paris, n. d.). 13 Voltaire, ‘Histoire d’un bon bramin,’ Romans et contes (Paris: Garnier, 1960), 113. 14 Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Oeuvres complètes, 22 vols. (Paris: Pourrat Frères, 1833–34), vol. 11, 371–2, in Michèle Duchet, Anthropologie et histoire au siècle des lumières (Paris: Maspéro, 1971), 247. 15 Elisabeth Badinter has also edited a volume, entitled A.L. Thomas-DiderotMadame d’Epinay – Qu’est-ce qu’une femme? (Paris: P.O.L., 1989), containing some documents in the controversy at mid-century. For Rousseau, see Madelyn Gutwirth, ‘The “article Genève” quarrel and the reticence of French Enlightenment discourse on women in the public realm,’ Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, no. 12 (2001), 135–66.

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16 Denis Diderot, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Le Club Français du Livre, 1969), vol. 10, 225. 17 For corroboration, see, e.g., Carol Duncan, ‘Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in French Art,’ Art Bulletin 55 (1973), 570–83; Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 66–78; and my Twilight, 178–87. 18 Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard, ‘Sauvages et utopies (1676–1715): L’exotisme alibi,’ in Exoticism in French Literature, French Literature Series (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), vol. 13, 8. 19 See Douthwaite, Exotic Women, 146–61. 20 Candide among the Oreillons, as noted by Jeannette Geffriaud-Rosso, Etudes sur la féminité aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Pisa: Libreria Goliardica, 1984), 45. 21 Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 59. 22 Chevalier de Méré, Les Femmes ou lettres du chevalier de K ... au marquis de ... (The Hague: 1754), 32, 34, 94, and Lettres au chevalier de K par la marquise de*** (The Hague: 1754), 13, 15, 94–5, 127. 23 For example, the anonymous Cléodamis et Lelex ou l’illustre esclave (The Hague: Chez Pierre Paupie, 1756),whose heroine, after surviving invasion and slavery, succeeds in becoming both a mother and a hero on the battlefield (‘je vivrai en homme tant que nous aurons des ennemis à combattre,’ 60), winning by popular acclaim the leadership of Lelex’s own people. 24 Douthwaite explores this most thoroughly in her introduction to Exotic Women, but also passim. 25 Louis Réau, ‘Carle Vanloo-Jean Restout: Les Lithographies de paysages en France à l’époque romantique,’ Archives de l’art français 19 (1935–1937; repr. Paris: F. de Noble, 1976), 67. 26 References to Zaïre are to the lines in the play. 27 An illuminating confirmation of Voltaire’s posture regarding Zaïre’s vexed religious and conscientious stance comes to us from his biography. When secretary to the French ambassador at The Hague, the young Arouet fell in passionate love with Olympe Du Noyer, daughter of a Protestant émigré woman who had married a Catholic, but subsequently, when her marriage fell apart, abjured a faith she had never really embraced. Desperate to have Olympe follow him back to France, Voltaire asked his former teacher, Père Tournemine, to petition the Bishop of Evreux to intervene on his behalf and enable her reentry into the country as a ‘new Catholic.’ He wrote Olympe that all she would need to do was ask the father from whom she was estranged to summon her back, after which she would be placed in a Paris convent for ‘new Catholic’ women. As Geoffrey Adams points out, ‘had she accepted ... she would have become a virtual prisoner in an institution devoted to the spiri-

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29 30 31 32

33 34 35

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tual re-education of young Calvinist women, and Voltaire would have become the accomplice of those whose chief function in life was to secure conversion under pressure.’ Desire easily outranked the beloved’s freedom of conscience in this case. The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685–1787. The Enlightenment Debate (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991), 57 n.3. In his edition of the Théâtre complet de Marivaux (Paris: Garnier, 1981), Frédéric Deloffre points out that the original work of 1729 was greatly altered in the published version of 1750. No longer a three-act play but a single act, in the latter no sanctions are taken against the unruly women. Deloffre sees it as a more bourgeois play. (‘Introduction,’ xxxviii). The edition referred to in this text is Marivaux: Théâtre, ed. by Michel Déon, 2 vols. (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1966), vol 1. Deloffre, ‘Introduction,’ ibid., attributes this point to Marcel Arland. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, ‘Authorizing American Identity, American Literary History (1993), 5(3): 481–511. Douthwaite, Exotic Women, 20. Douthwaite’s chapters 1 and 2 explore this matter in Mme de Lafayette’s Zaïde and Mme de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une péruvienne, and compare them with novels by men. Erica Harth in Cartesian Women (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 169–88, discusses Marie Anne de Roumier Robert’s fictions in a related vein. The edition used is Oeuvres de madame la baronne de Staël-Holstein, 3 vols. (Paris: Lefèvre, 1838), vol. 1, page references in the text. This question is discussed in my Madame de Staël, Novelist – The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1978), ch. 2, 31. Jeannette Geffriaud-Rosso, Etudes sur la féminité aux XVIIe et XVIII siècles (Pisa: Editrice Libreria Goliardica, 1984), 73, citing Lambert’s Avis d’une mère à son fils, edition of 1808. In Geneviève Fraisse, Opinions des femmes (Paris: Côté-Femmes éditions, 1989), 142–3, from Fanny Raoul, Opinion d’une femme sur les femmes (1801).

ten

Masculinity, Lunacy, and the Sexual Deviant ANN GOLDBERG

The modern insane asylum and the profession of psychiatry first emerged from the lunacy reforms in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Europe and North America.1 These reforms were products of the Enlightenment and its discourse of tolerance and humanitarianism. Specialized medical institutions for the cure of the mentally ill came to replace the multi-functional workhouses and prisons of the absolutist states, as the mad came to be seen as a suffering, ill, and abused group who could and should be restored to society by humane medical care. Since Foucault and the antipsychiatry critiques of the 1960s, the basic premises of the reformers – that insanity is an objective illness requiring only greater knowledge to properly treat it, and that the reforms were motivated by and produced a greater humanitarianism and tolerance for the mad – have been challenged to their core. Psychiatry was a social activity, and psychiatrists brought to their definitions and treatment of madness social norms and values against which they judged patient behaviour and made decisions about incarceration. For this reason, in the name of scientific objectivity, humanitarianism, and progress, psychiatry often functioned to stigmatize and exclude the socially marginal and disturbing. Furthermore, by providing the theoretical and institutional basis for pathologizing and secluding social deviancy, the asylum system, with its cadre of experts, could function to produce not only greater intolerance, but mental illness itself.2 In this essay, I will explore one example of how this process worked in the newly discovered ‘illness’ of masturbatory insanity. I will show how this illness concept was closely bound up with the issue of gender, in particular the problem of masculinity, and how it worked to pathologize and

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institutionalize a huge range of ‘undesirable’ behaviour that had hitherto stood outside the realm of medicine. In doing so, it contributed to a sharpened level of intolerance for certain kinds of deviant men. The analysis is based on asylum patient files, a set of neglected sources in studies on ideas about masturbation. In contrast to contemporary medical and pedagogical tracts, these case files have the virtue of giving us access to the daily practices of psychiatry and the ways in which theories about masturbatory illness were applied to patients. The patient files are those of one of Germany’s first modern asylums: the Eberbach Asylum (1815–1849), a former monastery located in the western German territory of Nassau. Eberbach opened its doors in 1815 as a detention institution, tied administratively and physically to the correctional house on the premises. By the 1820s, its directors – Philipp Lindpaintner, a jurist by training, and the house physician Dr Windt – had succeeded in converting the asylum into a modern medical institution, using the most up-to-date psychiatric techniques and gaining thereby a reputation that drew applications from across Germany by well-to-do families. The great majority of patients, however, came from Nassau’s rural poor, a demographic profile consistent with that of the population at large in this economically backward and impoverished area of Germany.3 While masturbation had always been proscribed as sinful by the Church, the notion that it caused illness was a new idea of the age of Enlightenment. The first tract asserting such a claim was published anonymously in England in the early eighteenth century by a medical quack peddling a masturbation cure. By mid-century, the link between masturbation and a host of illnesses – mental and physical – had been legitimized by the classic treatise of the prominent Swiss physician Tissot.4 Masturbatory illness was launched on its famous career, to strike terror in the hearts of Europeans for the next two centuries. The ‘unnatural’ loss of semen and the weakening of the nerve fibres from overstimulation, according to expert opinion, was the cause of a host of illnesses, from epilepsy, consumption, digestive disorders and impotency, to hypochondria, imbecility, and nymphomania. Death could be the ultimate fate of the onanist if he was not cured of his ‘addiction.’ The nascent profession of psychiatry embraced the concept of masturbatory illness with special interest, so that by the early nineteenth century the effects of masturbation were focused increasingly on mental and nervous disorders.5 Secularization of the sin of masturbation accomplished what the Church had never been able to do, turning the issue into a feverish cru-

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sade to stamp out the ‘vice,’ and thereby, of course, massively increasing the level of intolerance for the act and justifying an intensification of vigilance, control, and intervention in the lives of especially children and youths – the primary ‘abusers.’ Masturbatory illness, however, was about much more than pathologizing and banning an act. A number of explanations for the causes and meaning of masturbation hysteria have been offered by historians. Interpretations differ, but there is one point on which everyone agrees: the obsession with masturbation was linked to the values and anxieties of a particular class – the bourgeoisie. Scholars have noted, for example, the connection between the quintessential bourgeois values of thrift, self-control, and prudence, so essential to its class identity and success, and the deviant and pathological aspects of the onanist. Masturbation involved giving in to and being consumed by sensual enjoyment, something that had to be strictly repressed in bourgeois culture; the masturbator became lazy, ennervated, and unable to work; and economic metaphors of ‘wasting’ or squandering the sperm were constantly used to describe the immorality and danger of the act.6 Foucault (and those following him) argued that the pathology of the ‘masturbating child’ was part of a broader strategy of self-legitimation by the bourgeoisie in its struggles for political and economic hegemony. Against the sexual excesses of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie asserted its virtue and morality; against their descent and blood, which had legitimated aristocratic power, the bourgeoisie focused on the health, vigour, and longevity of their bodies.7 The Eberbach files support the contention that masturbation fears were specific to the bourgeoisie. Among Eberbach patients (and their families), attitudes toward masturbation varied noticeably by socioeconomic class; the lower-class patients held views distinctly different from their middle-class counterparts. Through having been surrounded at home, school, and work by self-appointed masturbation experts, middle-class masturbators were usually known as such before incarceration, or even before the initial medical exam. And it was only middle-class patients who resorted to desperate and extreme measures, such as suicide attempts, out of despair over their masturbation.8 In lower-class patients, by contrast, the common refrain of their families, when questioned by doctors on suspicious hand positions and semen stains, was that they had not noticed anything.9 No lower-class patient was heard evincing much anxiety, let alone guilt and terror, about the matter,10 although by the time of their release from the asylum these patients had been well instructed by the staff in all of its horrors.11

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If the case files indicate the link between class and masturbation obsession, they also show the connection between gender and the illness of masturbatory insanity. In Eberbach’s statistics of the causes of patients’ illnesses, no females were ever listed under the heading of ‘onanism’ or ‘self-defilement,’ whereas masturbation stood almost consistently at the top of the list of causes of insanity in males.12 It is not that female patients did not do it, or that masturbation was not considered pathogenic in women. It is that in women, masturbation was thought to cause various states of overexcitement, excessive sexual drive, and aggressivity, which the asylum categorized as nymphomania or simple mania. In male patients, the asylum attributed a completely opposite set of symptoms to masturbation: lethargy, passivity, weakness of mind and body. Whereas in females, the asylum conceptualized the effects of masturbation in terms of excess and surfeit (too much energy, desire, loudness, etc.), it thought of those effects in males in terms of loss and decline: the wasting away of the body, idiocy, loss of the will to work and achieve, and even lack of sexual desire. Withdrawn and shy, the typical male masturbator preferred the passive enjoyment of the good life (dreaming, smoking, sitting by the fire, lying in bed) to the duties and responsibilities of social existence. ‘Weakness,’ ‘deadened,’ ‘dullness’ were the terms used to describe the male onanist. Ferdinand W., a forty-seven-year-old former state official, presented the classic picture of the onanist’s fate. As described by the asylum staff, he was ‘physically weak, sunk in full passivity [with] a particularly weak memory’; his gait was unsure and stumbling, and every one of his movements exhausted him. He could sit or lie around all day ‘indifferent to the outer world ... without the will to raise himself out of the base slavery of his disgusting habits.’13 Gustav V., also a state official by profession, was suspected of masturbation due to his mental ‘distraction, laziness, [and] indolence.’ He liked living well, and ‘can sit all day by the oven smoking and dreaming,’ displaying an infuriating ‘indifference’ to his fate. From time to time he would remark only with a laugh, ‘If I had a wife it would help me.’ In this state, he seemed incapable of the reflection necessary for employment. And yet, there was a glimmer of hope in the possibility that Gustav at least retained some consciousness of his awful decline: ‘the patient [himself] seems to feel this weakness.’14 Most historians of the subject have emphasized how threatening masturbation was to the importance placed on self-control and the repression of desire in bourgeois culture. The Eberbach cases, however, show that this paradigm is really only applicable to females, where sexual pathology was defined in terms of excess and cure thus involved limiting,

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controlling, or eradicating desire. In the male masturbation cases, by contrast, pathology was defined essentially as a depletion, not only of strength and will, but of desire itself. Eberbach’s assistant doctor, Andreas Basting, commented with amazement that the peasant Johann R., despite having been ‘weakened’ (geschwächt) from onanism, ‘is, however, still dominated by a prevailing sex drive,’ and went on to point out that ‘if he continues to masturbate, he will for sure become a victim of idiocy.’15 In the case of a twenty-three-year-old journeyman dyer, it was believed that masturbation was responsible for his lack of desire for the opposite sex. Noting the patient’s onanism since age twelve, the examining medical official wrote that the patient’s relatives had been struck for a long time by his ‘indifference to the female sex,’ adding that the family, however, never suspected the ‘real reason’ (wahren Grund) for this condition, that is, onanism. This diagnosis was evident from the observable symptoms: sensuality, indolence, and a ‘proclivity to a life of pleasure’ (zum Wohlleben).16 Self-control was important for preventing this state of affairs, and at Eberbach restraint mechanisms, such as the straitjacket, were used on both female and male onanists. But given the way the pathology was defined in males, this was a type of self-control directed, not at repression, but at the freeing and production of energy, will, strength (mental and physical), and even desire itself. The former law student Adolph H. was originally one of the best students in his Gymnasium. Onanism, however, had led to ‘hallucinations’ and his failure at school (he left before taking his final exams). In the asylum, he ‘practised onanism openly and shamelessly,’ and thus needed to learn to ‘master his passion.’ Yet, at the same time, the cure for the passion of onanism (and for the patient’s ‘weak constitution,’ failed exams, and mental confusion) did not involve the suppression of desire so much as the stimulation and revival of strength and vigour – ‘exercise in fresh air, physical work ... a strong and easily digestible diet.’17 Fundamentally, what doctors were trying to restore to their male patients was nothing less than their manhood. Taken together, the traits associated with masturbatory illness represented the opposite of what was coming to define the essence of manhood among the middle classes: strength, intelligence, aggressivity, independence, self-discipline, and other characteristics associated with the male sphere of work, learning, and politics. Masturbators – weak, passive, mentally incapacitated, and socially withdrawn – were a kind of male anti-ideal that embodied the gender anxieties and norms of middle-class men of the time.18

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That this illness was directly about masculinity and its loss is best seen in the way masturbation was read from physical traits of the body. These bodily signs included not only paleness and rings around the eyes, but also effeminate traits indicating an arrested development into manhood and the feminization of the male body. About a seventeen-year-old onanist, for example, Dr Basting noted that ‘[his] development is not yet progressed enough. The beard hair has barely grown, his voice is weak and high ... and [furthermore] his muscles are very flabby.’19 The condition of the genitals, including their size and strength, could provide another important sign of self-abuse. An examination of the genitals of a twenty-year-old mason, for example, revealed that ‘the hair growth on the genitals is weak, the testicles are small and weakly developed.’ On the basis of this fact, together with other physical symptoms, the asylum came to doubt the original diagnosis of the commitment report, whose author (a local medical official), lacking such knowledge, had emphasized the social causes of illness, namely, the patient’s induction in the army and his sudden layoff from his job. Not so, according to the asylum diagnosis, which pointed (inconclusively) in the direction of ‘abuse of the genitals’ and the general ‘puberty development.’20 Masturbatory insanity did not proscribe an act per se, so much as a deviant gender type – the effeminate, weak male. In speaking of masculine traits that were ‘lost’ as a consequence of male masturbation, rather than of traits ‘eradicated’ or ‘changed,’ the discourse implied that these traits were desirable; it thus pointed to and reinforced a specific concept of masculinity: strong in mind and body, virile, aggressive, self-controlled, that is, the qualities that would provide both the basis for male self-rule in the liberal state and the justification for continued male hegemony over women.21 Those who wrote about onanism, diagnosed it, and cured it, participated thereby in the formation and enforcement of a certain normative ideal of masculinity. Through proceeding against an act, they were working to shape weaklings into men, and to shore up the very basis of male privilege at a time when the very notion of privilege was under attack. In practical terms, the concept of masturbatory insanity provided a new way of seeing the person which included a set of symptoms so allencompassing that it opened the door to the pathologizing of a wide variety of behaviour, much of which lay in the realm of indiscipline and disobedience. Masturbatory insanity, in other words, became a tool of almost unlimited potential to force men into shape – mentally, physically, financially, and socially. Among the patients at Eberbach were men

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who had become suspected of masturbation on account of having the wrong attitude to work, failing exams, or not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. They were threatened with being fired from work, with being thrown out of school, with physical examinations, and finally, with incarceration in the asylum. These men did indeed pose problems for their families and communities. They were behaving in inappropriate and disturbing ways (that is, in ways that upset the normative functioning and roles in their communities), such that action was required, either of a medical or disciplinary sort. But how were the authorities to decide what sort of action to take? Most of these men did not outwardly appear to be mad. They were not raving, hallucinating, or displaying any of the other obvious signs of madness that doctors used to diagnose insanity. Yet their behaviour seemed strange, often irrational, and certainly unacceptable. Here, in this grey zone of illness and indiscipline, the concept of masturbatory insanity could be useful, for it provided a coherent, scientifically based explanation for otherwise mystifying cases of social deviancy. In so doing, it pointed the way to a solution, namely, medical cure in the asylum. In this way, the ‘illness’ was useful both to families and communities seeking to rid themselves of unwanted members and to the field of psychiatry itself, a discipline in its infancy, struggling to establish itself as a respected and socially useful profession. These issues are illustrated well in the case of Johann A., a thirty-fiveyear-old farm labourer and former soldier interned as a masturbator in 1842.22 Johann had been in trouble with the authorities for some time before the medical examinations that prompted his incarceration. He had been repeatedly punished for disobedience in the army, and since his release six months earlier had done nothing in his town but ‘prowl around’ in rags, ‘extort’ drink and food from people, and lie around in barns. He was without parents or property, and given his failure to work, threatened to become a drain on community poor relief. He had also threatened to cut his throat. He was, in other words, a marginal and troubling figure, of whom the community wanted to rid itself. The assistant medical official called in to examine him, however, could find no sure signs of mental disturbance: all possible somatic causes of illness turned up negative (strong body, always healthy, mental capabilities in school, no hereditary propensity to insanity in the family). Therefore, the doctor was unsure how to assess the murkier areas of speech and behaviour – not only Johann’s failure to work and his suicide threats, but also his taciturnity (he tended to answer the authorities with: ‘I don’t

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know’ or ‘it’s none of your business’). The doctor concluded his report by declaring that, given the ambiguity of Johann’s symptoms and the lack of information on his earlier illness in the army, no definitive medical opinion could be reached. The question remained open: might Johann indeed be suffering from ‘feeble-mindedness’ or could ‘all of this’ (symptoms of feeblemindness) be ‘simulated in order to be able to indulge in his laziness,’ that is, was Johann a sick man or a delinquent? Johann thus remained in his community, only to continue with his unacceptable behaviour. Several months later, the authorities were once again notified. This time, however, a higher-ranking, more knowledgeable medical official, Dr Thilenius, was called in, and he had the luck of acquiring a fresh piece of evidence that would settle the case once and for all in favour of masturbation. The evidence had arrived in a report from Frankfurt am Main written by the garrison doctor who had treated Johann during his stint in the army. After repeated misbehaviour (drunkeness, dirtiness, insubordination), Johann had been transferred to the military hospital, where the doctor in charge had made the discovery that the insubordinate soldier suspected of feeble-mindedness was indeed ill. Johann’s semen-stained linen proved that he ‘had succumbed to the vice of onanism, and this was the cause of his feeblemindedness.’ Armed with the missing piece of evidence that had stymied the first doctor, Thilenius was able to make the diagnosis that would lead to Johann’s commitment to the insane asylum. He was now ‘convinced,’ as he put it, ‘of the genuine existence of insanity, manifesting itself in a weakened mind and mental dullness.’ The attached report from Frankfurt ‘confirms this assumption, and indicates a very important cause – onanism.’ Masturbation was the critical factor deciding the case in favour of illness. Indeed, it was the only proof offered in the final medical report. Johann’s laziness and passivity, his avoidance of work in favour of the good life (food, drink, and lounging around in barns) now became clear signs of mental dysfunction (rather than of simulation/delinquency). New factors also came into focus: Johann’s taciturnity and embarrassment when asked questions; the fact that, despite his performance in school, he was, it turned out, an ‘idiot’ – all these were textbook signs of masturbation. This was not the last time Johann’s fate would be determined by the now practically famous Frankfurt ‘stains.’ Although his masturbation apparently was never directly confirmed by observation, from the day of his admission to Eberbach, Johann was treated as an onanism case, sub-

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jected to a regimen of cold douches, purgatives, and other measures. As with Dr Thilenius, knowledge of prior masturbation allowed the Eberbach staff to read the classic masturbatory symptoms of idiocy into behaviour that was at best ambiguous. Dr Windt noted, for example, that Johann ‘either did not answer questions at all or [did so] monosyllabically and evasively. His staring expression gives proof of dull brooding [and] lack of intelligence’; all of which Windt attributed to onanism. The now convincing signs of idiocy, of course, were the very same symptoms that earlier, before masturbation was known, had been impossible to interpret with any certainty. Knowledge of masturbation thus allowed Thilenius and, later, the asylum staff, to see in a particular way, to ‘decode’ as illness signs that otherwise had no clear meaning or that led in the direction of indiscipline and delinquency. Johann’s case demonstrates how the concept of masturbatory insanity worked to ‘medicalize’ deviant males. In an ambiguous case, where delinquency and illness were not clearly distinguishable, it provided doctors with the crucial and sole piece of ‘scientific’ evidence for determining illness. In this sense, it proved to be a highly effective tool for the expansion of medical expertise into the realms of social deviancy and delinquency. This process alone did not create intolerance for Johann; he had already been marginalized and cast out – socially and psychologically – from the community. Yet, it would be inaccurate to conclude from this that the concept of masturbatory insanity did no more than reformulate in medical terms pre-existing prejudices and proscriptions. By turning an act into an illness entity and then into a pathological type (the effeminate male), the concept served to focus and heighten fears and fantasies. It also supported the development of a set of experts who, armed with their new knowledge, had both the tools and a powerful justification for rigorous and systematic intervention. The lunacy reformers saw their task as emancipatory – liberating the mad from their subhuman status and from the prisons of their own minds through the clear light of science. It was a noble cause, but one, in historical retrospect, that had a number of distinctly anti-emancipatory consequences. It created an institutional structure and a set of experts which, through such new inventions as masturbatory insanity, could and did produce illness where it had not before been seen; that allowed social disciplining to take place under the guise of medical treatment; that served to shape certain sorts of people by the normative and social, not ‘scientific,’ standards of those new experts; and that, in the long run, as the skyrock-

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eting number of asylum inmates attests,23 helped to increase sharply the level of intolerance for the marginal and socially deviant.

Notes 1 This essay is part of a research project that was published in Ann Goldberg, Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 2 Some of the more influential works in this revisionist strand of the historiography of psychiatry include Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage, 1973); Robert Castel, The Regulation of Madness: The Origins of Incarceration in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Klaus Dörner, Madmen and the Bourgeoisie (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); Andrew Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1979); Andrew Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). 3 Preserved in the Hessen State Archive, Wiesbaden, Eberbach’s patient files include documents – particularly the legally mandated commitment reports written by Nassau medical officials and reports by local officials – that offer detailed information on the nature and circumstances of the patient’s ‘illness,’ family, education, and employment background, and the attitudes of family and community members towards insanity. For further information on Nassau and Eberbach, see Goldberg, Sex, ch. 1. 4 L’Onanisme, dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation ... First published in Latin as ‘Tentamen de morbis ex manustuprations,’ in ibid., Dissertatio de febribus biliosis (Lausanne: Sumptib. Marci-Mic. Bousquet & Soc., 1758). 5 For an overview of ideas on masturbatory illness, see E.H. Hare, ‘Masturbatory Insanity: The History of an Idea,’ Journal of Mental Science 108 (1962), 2– 21. 6 G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half-Known Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 178–84; Peter T. Cominos, ‘Late Victorian Sexual Respectability and the Social System,’ International Review of Social History 8 (1963), 18–48; Some of the literature is reviewed in Jean Stengers and Anne van Neck, Histoire d’une Grande Peur: la Masturbation (Brussels: University of Brussels Press, 1984). Thomas Laqueur does not explicitly link masturbation anxiety to the bourgeoisie, but has suggested its connection with the anxieties generated by what was perceived as an ‘asocial’ market economy. ‘The Social Evil, the Soli-

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tary Vice and Pouring Tea,’ in Michel Feher (ed.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body (New York: Zone, 1989), vol. 3, 335–42. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1980), vol. 1, 123–5; and the works by Aron and Kempf discussed in Stengers, Grande Peur, 107. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (HStAW), 430/1, nos. 26 and 206 provide two examples of this. Ibid., nos. 722 and 164. One patient argued it was the only way for him to get well. Ibid., no. 249. Ibid., nos. 230 and 249. HStAW 211/394, 1–3. This diagnostic pattern was not an anomaly. Although no comparable analysis has been done for other nineteenth-century asylums, a similar gender-specific pattern can be found in monographs on two other asylums. Anne Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 210; Ellen Dwyer, Homes for the Mad: Life Inside Two Nineteenth-Century Asylums (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 102. HStAW 430/1, no. 113. Ibid., no. 606. Ibid., no. 495, 1839. Ibid., no. 722, 7 Nov., 1835. Ibid., no. 2594. The gender dimension of masturbation ideas has been almost non-existent in the literature. Exceptions are G.J. Barker-Benfield, Horrors of the Half-Known Life, and ‘The Spermatic Economy: A Nineteenth-Century View of Sexuality,’ in M. Gordon (ed.), The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1973), 336–72, who analyses the ideas of medical and self-help manuals in Antebellum America. The author links the masturbation phobia to the ‘pressure placed on ... manhood’ from the spread of democracy and industrialization. This context is not applicable to the Eberbach sources. Nassau was neither democratic nor industrializing. Ed Cohen, ‘(R)evolutionary Scenes: The Body Politic and the Political Body in Henry Maudsley’s Nosology of “Masturbatory Insanity,”’ Nineteenth-Century Contexts 11 (1987), 179–91, has examined the masturbation notions of the prominent British psychiatrist Henry Maudsley. Most significantly, see Isabel Hull, ‘“Sexualität” und bürgerliche Gesellschaft,’ in Ute Frevert (ed.), Bürgerinnen und Bürger: Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), 49–66, and Isabel Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), esp. 258–79. Hull locates the emergence of the modern notion of ‘sexuality,’ including the

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obsession with onanism, within the context of state building and the development of a bourgeois, liberal society. HStAW 430/1, no. 541. Ibid., no. 1231. I am indebted to Isabel Hull (n18) for the connections she draws between liberalism and the new ideas on masturbation. HStAW, 430/1, no. 264. Limited in the early part of the century, asylum incarceration rates expanded massively in Germany after 1870. See Dirk Blasius, ‘Einfache Seelenstörung,’ Geschichte der deutschen Psychiatrie, 1800–1945 (Frankfurt/M: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994), 74–9.

eleven

Extirpation and Toleration: Villain and Whore – Some Thoughts about the Toleration of ‘Social Evil’ in Bourgeois Society PETER BECKER

Praeterea censeo, carthaginem esse delendam. Cato the Elder, cited in Franz Andreas Wennmohs 18231

Introduction: Tolerance and Criminality Of the many dangerous types of criminals who commanded the attention of German criminologists and penal reformers in the early nineteenth century, one type, Gauners, earned especially intense condemnation. Gauners were professional villains who specialized in property crimes and who seemed unresponsive to penal and moral interventions, traits that made them particular thorns in the sides of prosecutors and criminologists alike. Franz Andreas Wennmohs, the magistrate from Mecklenburg who wrote Ueber Gauner und über das zweckmäßigste, vielmehr einzige Mittel zur Vertilgung dieses Uebels (1823), captured the attitude of his contemporaries most dramatically when, through the device of a metaphor, he linked Gauners with the inhabitants of ancient Carthage. The motto opening his book paraphrases Cato the Elder, thus implying that everything about Gauners – their way of life and their mentality, as well as their specific property crimes – was reprehensible and deserving of destruction. In fact, Gauners stood at one of the boundaries of toleration in early nineteenth-century German society, and their treatment in the criminological literature of the period can help to reveal how and why the boundaries were drawn as they were. Early nineteenth-century Germany was a society undergoing rapid change. To many people, the bourgeois socioeconomic structures that

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were replacing the old world were confusing and threatening, in part because long-accepted concepts of social status and rank, as well as conventional external manifestations of social position, were disappearing. Meanwhile, a new, reliable semiotics of class and status had yet to emerge. It is against this background that we must set our examination of toleration towards Gauners. Wennmohs himself worked with a central investigation unit in Mecklenburg that had been charged specifically with finding ways to improve the fight against professional criminals. But throughout the various German states, legal scholars, philosophers, magistrates, and criminologists were engaged in evaluating the inherited penal institutions and practices, and the theories on which they rested, in an effort to reconfigure legal systems to meet the needs of the new social order. Lists of criminal behaviours, the designation of appropriate punishments for each sort of crime, and even the conceptualization of the purposes of punishment were all being revisited and transformed. The theory and practice under scrutiny rested on enlightened assumptions about human psychology and also on the presumed efficacy of the practical gaze, that is, the wisdom acquired through the experience of working with deviants. Neither theory nor practice generally prescribed harsh punishment for criminal activity, and certainly not death. Thus few criminals were consigned, as Wennmohs consigned the Gauners, to residence in a metaphorical Carthage slated for extinction. Instead, legislators and penal reformers bet that enlightenment, brought about by various methods of education, would lead to the eventual rehabilitation of most criminals.2 Within the contemporary context, then, the calls for the total elimination of Gauners are truly unique and suggest what seems at first glance to be a departure from standard practice. The fact that Gauners threatened the institution of private property and thus posed a particular threat to the fragile, new social structures organized around the possession of wealth and its exchange through commerce might seem enough of an explanation for their condemnation. But Gauners were certainly not the only professional criminals operating in German communities, nor were they the only criminals preying on private property; their special vilification must, therefore, be explained on other grounds. By examining the rhetoric on Gauners contained in the literature of the period and by comparing the treatment of Gauners, as male members of the criminal underworld, to that of prostitutes, their female counterparts, I shall show that what lies behind the attitudes towards Gauners is a special application of utilitarian concepts to the perceived needs of nineteenth-century bourgeois German society.

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Viewed this way, the policies towards Gauners become less an anomaly and more an extension of then- standard practices. Legal theory of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was very much concerned with prevention as a means of realizing the vision of a society free of deviance and crime. It was assumed that criminal behaviour could be discouraged through a combination of carefully designed, unavoidable punishments and Ortsaufsicht, or local policing.3 Both punishment and policing were presumed to have deterrent and educative power – punishment, by showing offenders and would-beoffenders alike that criminal acts bring inevitable pain to perpetrators, and careful policing, by enforcing the law and regulating the behaviour of all citizens. For the deterrent character of the penal law to be effective, no act defined legally as a crime could be tolerated, and every offender had to be apprehended and convicted.4 The theory predicted that the cumulative effects of inescapable punishment and tight police supervision would shape desirable, habitual patterns of behaviour in citizens and thus produce a crime-free society.5 Deterrence theories themselves rested on the belief that all human beings have minds structured according to a universal pattern, in which reason and the passions coexist. Thus criminals and respectable citizens are alike in essence. The criminal mind differs from the respectable one only in having imbalances – a lack of will power, strong passions, or strong evil spirits – forces that offset the power of reason and lead the criminal astray. However imbalanced, the rational structure of the criminal mind means that it can be shaped by education. Thus a wrongdoer can be taught the error and unproductiveness of his ways, his mind returned to a state in which reason and the passions are balanced, and his life rehabilitated so that he can be safely reintegrated into society. From this point of view, punishment acts as a teaching method applied in the service of rehabilitation.6 With prevention as their goal, criminologists searched the biographies of criminals for the crucial points at which their lives had veered onto the paths that led to their criminal careers, hoping in this way to identify effective means for returning wayward individuals to respectable life styles and for preventing others from falling prey to similar mistakes. Early forays in criminal psychology tried to unravel the wide array of passions, tendencies, and spirits responsible for the wrong turns in human lives. If criminals were essentially rational beings, whose reason had been overpowered by irrational forces, then law-abiding citizens might also be prey to deviance in certain circumstances; the impulses towards deviance

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were presumed dormant in these more respectable individuals. Again, theory and practice tended to see criminals and law-abiding citizens as essentially alike, as individuals who could be placed along a continuum defined by the degree of operational rationality.7 There were, however, two types of lawbreakers presumed to fall outside this continuum: insane criminals and Gauners. Insane criminals were excused – not tolerated – for their criminal activities on the grounds that, by definition, they lacked reason and thus could not be expected to live their lives responsibly; although intolerable, their crimes had to go unpunished in a just society. On the same grounds, however, it was deemed necessary to remove the criminally insane from society until they either regained reason or acquired enough knowledge about the rules governing society to behave appropriately. Gauners, in contrast, were deemed wholly intolerable, not to be excused or even allowed to exist. After all, they were unresponsive both to education and to punishment. Worse, their deviance was not a temporary or occasional state resulting from excessive passion but, instead, was a permanent, systematic trait governed by a twisted, calculating, scarcely recognizable form of reason, clearly outside the boundaries of the human. Socially, Gauners transgressed recognized limits by failing to honour the golden rule stipulation that people should not do to fellow citizens what they do not want done to themselves. They wilfully disregarded social rules and set themselves apart from bourgeois society, preferring both the companionship of fellow hard-core criminals and the rules of the criminal underworld. Additionally, they successfully thwarted, even mocked, government efforts to safeguard citizens against criminality.8 For all these reasons, but especially because, unlike ordinary criminals, they were rational beings who wilfully misused their reason for criminal ends, Gauners seemed to threaten the very foundations on which the German state and society were built. Johann Ulrich Schöll, whose account of the Gauners was especially persuasive, remarked that ... as long as the number of these people [criminals] compared with the number of those who belong to the industrious and earning class is relatively not too large, as long as they pursue their pernicious work only in segregated and individual ways, or only on a temporary basis; they remain an ordinary and not very displeasing social evil. But when they take up begging and stealing as their only trade, when they pursue these activities systematically and employ thereby refined strategies; when they count several thousand people in a rather small area, when they are organized in a society of

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their own and cooperate in their trade; when they appear under the eyes of the public hidden behind very delusive masks and steal from citizens on occasions where they did not expect it at all; when they did not get together a short time ago, motivated by unfavourable conditions, but rather exist for centuries and could not be expunged by any means ...

in short, when ordinary criminals become Gauners, then they are something apart, not to be tolerated.9 Like heretics in early modern Europe – sixteenth-century French Calvinists particularly come to mind – Gauners were outsiders of a special sort, wilful criminals who constituted a sort of ‘state within the state,’ with a separate social structure and culture, and who pursued a distinct, threatening set of goals – traits that together posed implicit as well as explicit threats to the sociopolitical status quo.

Intolerance towards Gauners Schöll’s account lists the characteristics that made Gauners exceptionally threatening in his eyes. Echoing his position, police detectives and magistrates were especially concerned with the fact that Gauners customarily hid behind a facade of respectability, masquerading in their home communities as law-abiding citizens. Far away from home, however, they pursued their pernicious trade. When caught, they tried to deceive the authorities about their legal place of residence in order to safeguard the mask of respectability. This strategy challenged the existing system of investigation and prosecution, which was based on the comprehensive documentation of a person’s biography at his or her place of residence. To meet this challenge, Wennmohs, for one, suggested creating a highly centralized investigative unit, which would allow for the systematic collection of evidence and information from all German states. Criminologists welcomed the idea, noting the importance of building a ‘police machinery’ that would enable authorities to discover the legal identity of Gauners and prosecute them.10 Calls for institutional reform were given urgency by the belief that Gauners presented a special threat to society. The negatively loaded terminology used by criminologists to describe the relationship of Gauners to the healthy social body underscores the sense of urgency. We read that Gauners are ‘terrible scum (heilloses Gesindel), ‘many-headed monster[s]’ (vielköpfiges Ungeheuer), ‘pestilential limb[s]’ (ausgepestetes Glied), ‘parasitic growths’ (Parasitengewächs), and ‘cancers’ (Krebsschaden) on the social body.11 This terminology highlights the fact that Gauners were

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deemed far more dangerous than might be expected, given their actual crimes; as a malignant disease of the body politic, or a ferocious animal, or a monstrous deformity, they threatened the very structures of society. It was this dehumanizing rhetoric that helped to legitimate extreme, intolerant forms of ‘preventive’ action against them. The same rhetoric of dehumanization, applied to the ‘Jewish problem,’ was an important part of the racial discourse in the Weimar Republic.12 On the semantic level, the analogy between National Socialist propaganda and the early German criminological writings can be traced even further. We find early criminologists calling, for example, for the final ‘extermination’ (Ausrottung) of the Gauners, so that society might be relieved of their ‘polluted fumes’ (verpestete Dünste), just as lightning during a thunderstorm cleanses the air (dessen zerschmetternde Blitze die Luft nach und nach ... reinigen sollten).13 The analogy with National Socialism, however, cannot be stretched any further. No inexorable link was assumed at the beginning of the nineteenth century between a Gauner’s embodied habits and his actual physical existence. Thus the frequent calls for the extermination and destruction of Gauners should not necessarily be read as calls for actual capital punishment, even though the law allowed for such action in extreme cases.14 It was the activities of Gauners, not their bodies, that had to be destroyed.15 Nevertheless, the portrayal of the Gauners does lend something of the flavour of a crusade to the calls for the destruction of their world. Gauners assumed such menacing proportions in the criminological imagination because they challenged, threatened, and undermined the most basic institutions of nineteenth-century German bourgeois society: private property, respect for law, and moral probity. Moreover, they turned certain social values upside down. They pursued profit like any normal bourgeois, but to an extreme that wrought harm to individuals and to the community; they used their reason and talents in accordance with bourgeois values but dedicated them to hurtful ends. And, of course, their crimes continually violated the notion of private property. Gauners were guilty, in Hegelian terms, of putting their individual interests ahead of their duties to pursue the universal good.16 One of their methods of self-enrichment involved large-scale fraud, which was all the more dangerous to society because it caused not only material losses but also confusion among citizens about basic ethical values. Gauners thus threatened the norms of bourgeois morality as much as they threatened the actual property on which such society was based. They were so skilled at deception that they routinely managed to pass off the wrong for the right.

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These characteristics, however, fail to provide a ‘sufficient reason’ for the aggressive attitude of criminologists and legislators. The question still stands: Why were Gauners singled out for special attention when there were many other criminals whose activities were equally detestable and threatening, and, moreover, motivated by passion? It is certainly impossible to give a comprehensive answer to this question here, but I shall attempt to shed some light on the matter by constructing three arguments indebted to the explanatory powers of the counter-society concept. Social Distance from Bourgeois Society The first argument refers to the representation of Gauners as a distinct social group with its own rules, language, communication, and associations. Criminologists focused especially on this distinctness. Wennmohs, for example, emphasized that Gauners are a ‘class of people who are not worthy of this name [people] and who sequester [absondernd] themselves from interaction with everyone not their own kind, who socialize only with each other, in freedom, as in prison and detention, and who shut themselves off from all the methods of attaining excellence [Veredelung] and self-improvement, through example and teaching, that are offered by the state and its institutions.’17 That a self-sequestered social group could operate within the boundaries of German society was of grave concern to criminologists and legislators, especially since the group’s voluntary seclusion seriously limited the efficacy of the government’s criminal prevention efforts. The concomitant existence of a broader criminal underworld also gave the Gauners a social space that was beyond the inquisitive grasp of the police. There were lots of taverns and brothels where people in the know could find a hideout and identify fellows who might wish to join in a criminal venture. The ready availability of new recruits to criminal ventures provided the primary rationale for Wennmohs’s suggestion that authorities ought to turn down any request for parole from a Gauner imprisoned for less than ten years. Only when a Gauner’s former companions had vanished from their customary ‘friendly places’ would it be safe to release that Gauner and thus give him the opportunity to start life anew.18 The descriptions of the criminal underworld by criminologists are as revealing for their conceptual incongruities as for their specific content and ethnographic character.19 Wennmohs and his colleagues actually examined closely the set of social practices associated with Gaunerdom. They were at once repelled by and fascinated with Gauner culture, espe-

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cially since it appeared to replicate, in an inverted form, the habits, practices, and institutions (family structures and associations) of bourgeois society; Gauner culture seemed the negative image of the bourgeois world. Yet it was precisely this resemblance between underworld and upper that not only seemed to reveal how the presence of such a pernicious counter society could have gone for so many decades undetected but that also prodded theorists to try to explain how institutions that were believed integral to the good of bourgeois society could, in the underworld, support activities designed to inflict maximal damage on that very same world.20 If we look closely at criminological narratives, we see quickly that their presentation of the criminal world is ‘re-constructive,’ that it imposes interpretations on the facts. Wennmohs and his fellow criminologists found what they believed was evidence of close cooperation among professional criminals, and they used this finding to explain, at least in part, the vexing failure of their fight against Gauners. But this vision of cooperation was fundamentally flawed, because it exaggerated the bonds between criminals, even when they were members of a single gang. With the institutions of bourgeois society as their point of reference, criminologists were predisposed to perceive parallel institutions among criminals; the strong social bonds of the bourgeoisie would be reflected in equally strong relations among criminals. But reality often contradicted this perception of the criminal underworld. Johann Nikolaus Becker’s sketch of the so-called Mosel Gang brings the point home. He describes one of the gang’s ringleaders, Johann Müller, as a major force behind the effort to combine several gangs into a nationwide cooperative network under his direction. One might expect, therefore, to learn that Müller was a member of one of the gangs. But this was not the case, as Becker makes clear a few pages later: ‘he [Müller] acted most of the time alone and did not often stick with his companions, with whom he did not have an actual relationship.’21 Müller, it seems, was a lone wolf, whose actual relations with his fellow Gauners bear little resemblance to the tight-knit companionship of the bourgeois-inspired model. I do not mean with this example to suggest that there were no similarities between the habits and lives of professional criminals and those of respectable citizens, nor to suggest that the observed differences were simply invented by criminological writers. The criminologists do seem, however, to have exaggerated the nature and strength of social bonds between professional criminals, by magnifying signs of casual cooperation among Gauners into nationwide conspiracies. Whatever the flaws in their perception,

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these descriptions of Gaunerdom handily provided a rationale for establishing police networks on a similar scale, and thus their impact on German social history cannot be overemphasized. As for the differences between Gauners and law-abiding citizens, the sequestered nature of the Gauner world stands out above all else. Criminologists noted correctly that all the people who earned their living on the road, whether as beggars, tramps, peddlars, or Gauners, displayed peculiar habits. Gauners were the ‘hard core’ of this vagrant world, but they formed a distinct group within it. They spoke only among themselves, using a secret language, with unique styles of greeting and address. They addressed each other with first names only, so as not to give away the family names, which might reveal their legal identities, and they referred to absent companions by nicknames for the same reason. Gauners also expressed themselves through a unique body language with idiosyncratic gestures and peculiar ways of looking about that one observer described as having a ‘certain wildness and restlessness.’22 Away from the safety of their secluded underworld, Gauners possessed a remarkable talent for making themselves ‘invisible,’ thus difficult to detect and all the more frightening for it. They simply blended into the normal bourgeois world, avoiding the peculiar speech and behaviour patterns of their private world. The practical gaze customarily used by detectives and magistrates in their work with Gauners relied on a form of physiognomic theory, which claimed the ability to penetrate such veils of secrecy. The theory held that the very invisibility and secrecy necessary for successful operation as a Gauner would leave unique and unmistakable physical traces etched into Gauners’ faces and bodies, signs that would uncover their deceit.23 The two signs that were believed to distinguish Gauners from others were a customary way of looking about and certain unusual gestures, both so habitual that they seemed utterly natural and precisely the traits that a criminal lifestyle dependent on secrecy and anonymity for its success would demand. The Gauners’ demeanour served their criminal goals beautifully, allowing them to move about undetected among respectable and unsuspecting citizens, but the trained practical gaze would detect the presence of a practised need for secrecy in that very naturalness, associated as it was with peculiar, unnatural behaviours. And thus Gauners could be unmasked. By the early nineteenth century, however, it was becoming obvious that simple physical signs could not infallibly identify Gauners. And thus Wennmohs wrote, ‘so all of this includes only what as a rule constituted the Gauner, whereas there exist also numerous exceptions.’24 Wennmohs would go

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on to argue that the validity and efficacy of these signs as a semiotic depended on their being used in combination with knowledge from other sources. And such validity presumed that a catalogue of the ‘normal’ could actually be articulated so that the abnormal could be set apart. Therein lay the challenge. Reliance on physiognomic models reflected the wishes of the public and police experts alike for a transparent society, wherein the proper place of every person would be literally embodied, revealed unequivocally to any observer. Gauners violated this ideal, hiding the otherness of their language, habits, and values behind a mask of silence and anonymity, which disguised their presence in society. Given the importance assigned by contemporaries to language and habits as a means for achieving and reproducing social coherence, the peculiar language and habits of criminals strongly signified the ‘Otherness’ of their sequestered way of life. One criminologist, Friedrich Eberhardt, even went so far as to claim that criminals intended to set up a state within the state, thus making explicit the analogy between Calvinist ‘heretics’ and Gauners.25 Recruitment of New Members of the Criminal Underworld Criminologists were especially worried about an alleged ‘missionary zeal’ among Gauners, which, it was believed, was driving them to seek ‘converts’ from legitimate society to their pernicious lifestyle. Had Gauners restricted their proselytizing to the criminal world, they would not have posed as much of a threat to the social order. Here Gauners were clearly analogous to heretics of the early modern period, whose destructive power was often related to their ‘missionary zeal’: heretics purportedly spread false belief throughout society in order to save souls; Gauners, the evil of criminality into the respectable bourgeois world. The family members of Gauners were believed to be almost entirely under the spell of their wicked proselytizing. It seemed almost impossible for Gauner children to escape the influence of their parents, their surroundings, and the allure of the Gauner lifestyle. Johann Friedrich Karl Merker, a police expert from Erfurt, and Franz Rittler, police expert from the Habsburg monarchy, both began wondering whether such criminal tendencies might actually have their roots in heredity.26 They noted that Gauners’ children seemed to be driven naturally, as if by inborn principles, to take up lying, stealing, faking, and begging. Rittler painted a dark image of the moral character of these children. Because they never were exposed to the ennobling influences of moral and reli-

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gious Bildung, they ‘represented the most horrible examples of a villainous education’; their way of thinking about things sacred and sublime was one that even the most barbarous peoples would reject.27 The prevention mentality that dominated the reasoning of police experts viewed the fact that increasing numbers of children were being lost to the criminal underworld, not only as a frightening threat, but also as a challenge. During the first half of the century, police experts understood the challenge to save these children as comparable to the one that faced European nations as they sought to ‘morally educate the barbarous people of another hemisphere and to ignite in them the torch of enlightenment.’28 The Gauner children were regarded as morally savage individuals who had to be guided to their ‘destiny as men and citizens.’29 Merker noted in 1818, that Gauners had ‘a certain inclination to pull other people into their association and to instruct novices.’30 Thus the threat posed by Gauner proselytizing did not stop with families but extended into the broader community. Explanations for this phenomenon drew largely on then prevalent theories of individual psychology, which predicted that a person inclined to give the passions too much room for play would be especially vulnerable to the allures of Gaunerdom. An excess of passions over reason would weaken the rational faculty, thus allowing unprincipled self-interest and false pride to replace the communal good as the motive for individual action. With unprincipled self-interest shaping behaviour, an individual would then see the values, habits, and criminal acts of Gauners as valid, indeed ‘rational.’ The problem for policing and prevention, therefore, was that the mentality and habits associated with Gaunerdom were established in individuals long before they were overtly expressed in criminal behaviour. Preventive intervention, then, had to focus on individuals-at-risk, people who were beginning to display signs of the psychological imbalance that was the root cause of their vulnerability. Among the signs given greatest weight by theorists were certain patterns of consumption, especially when combined with unconventional work habits and attitudes, with heightened material needs, or with a desire for luxury and envy of a neighbour’s possessions.31 Moral reformers and criminologists alike believed that the most telling sign of an imbalanced mind or wickedness was the rejection of what Michel Foucault calls the labor nexus, a set of values and habits associated with work. Foucault argues that this nexus replaced and complemented morality as the guiding principle in modern society. Consequently, industriousness and immorality became intimately linked, albeit in an inverse

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causal sense, and one of the signs of an immoral character became idleness.32 Published descriptions of the criminal underworld written by police detectives and magistrates do indeed equate industriousness with morality, thus giving weight to Foucault’s argument. Becker, for example, describes Niklas Schwarz’s transition from citizen to Gauner as a result of his idleness.33 It was believed that the Gauner lifestyle, unburdened by the demands of legitimate work, was strongly attractive to idle citizens and thus, that the ‘missionary’ efforts of Gauners were especially effective with these citizens. To prevent idle, triebhafte (passionate, but in the sense of ‘ruled by the passions’) citizens from taking up criminal careers, the local police tried to monitor them as closely as possible. Such surveillance was intended to keep them in line with the standards of lawful behaviour. But criminologists recognized that the existence of a highly organized underworld undermined these policing efforts; anyone seeking to evade the constraints of bourgeois society could easily slip into the underworld communities of professional criminals, thereby escaping local surveillance and giving free range to ‘all his lusts, even if atop hay infested with vermin.’34 Although criminological writings were full of explanations for Gauners’ behaviour, only rarely did a Gauner’s self-representation appear. One of these exceptions can be found in Wennmohs’s book, and it deals precisely with labor nexus values. Wennmohs reports that when, during an interrogation, he accused one Gauner of ‘laziness,’ his accusation met with the following response: ‘Don’t you say anything about laziness, I earn my living with hardship.’35 The ‘lazy Gauner’ stereotype was thus strongly opposed by the Gauners themselves. They emphasized that their lives were dominated by anxiety and unrelenting labour, caused by the necessity of being constantly on the lookout for opportunities to make a sure ‘hit.’ Theirs was not the lifestyle of the lazy man but of what might be called ‘the industrious hunter,’ diligently pursuing his prey throughout the night. So astonished was Wennmohs by this self-perception that he included it in his book in a footnote, but he did not change his way of thinking about Gauners. Like other criminologists of that time, he held that Gauners, as well as their potential converts from the world of respectable men, rejected civil society, with its rules of diligence and proper citizenship, and he also believed that this attitude differentiated them essentially from hard-working citizens. His portrayals seem to contain contradictions: he describes Gauners as lazy and easy-going, but also as active,

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entrepreneurial, eager – although only to steal, commit fraud, and deceive citizens at the slightest provocation – and equally eager to recruit converts to the underworld. But what seems a problem of logic in these representations disappears when Gauners are firmly situated on the negative side of a Manichean, dualist world, polarized between good and evil, legitimate and illegitimate. Gauners, a Group That Turned Value Systems Upside Down The Gauners’ peculiar lifestyle suggested that they belonged to the negative sphere of a world divided between good and evil, legitimate and illegitimate, moral and immoral, upperworld and underworld. Their guiding principles, if not always their self-representations, seemed diametrically opposed to those of bourgeois society. Yet Gauners did not openly reject the respect for property so dear to bourgeois society. They simply turned their backs on it, giving their own wants and needs priority over those of the community in their pursuit of material gain. Here the behaviour of Gauners again paralleled that of heretics in earlier centuries; both groups embraced the primary goals of society – the accumulation of wealth in the Gauners’ case, the search for spiritual salvation, in the case of the heretics – while adopting illegitimate means to attain them. One of the outstanding characteristics of Gauners in this respect was their deceitful, unstable character, expressed in their habit of assuming different disguises according to the needs of the occasion. Gauners simply refused to comply with the principle of authenticity on which bourgeois socioeconomic relations depended and from which bourgeois respectability and integrity were derived. In practice, the principle of authenticity yielded the expectation that individuals would consistently look and act in ways specific to their status and profession. Such consistency, of course, provided a convenient way for strangers to classify or label each other, and presumably to know something about otherwise unknown people; it also assisted the task of community policing, so central to the German bourgeois world. The refusal by Gauners to live according to this principle confounded all efforts to categorize them according to observable appearances and activities and consequently prevented their being recognized or tracked. This strategy on the part of Gauners was considered a new phenomenon, as it was commonly assumed that prior to the nineteenth century, they had lived more transparently, as peddlars, beggars, or vagrants. Now they were masquerading behind a wider range of identities, many of them

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respectable bourgeois ones.36 This change in the Gauners’ strategy rendered invalid the ways in which the police categorized possible suspects, and it rendered a time-honoured method for maintaining social order impotent. The Gauners’ inauthenticity, particularly their habit of masquerading as respectable bourgeois citizens, further destabilized the social order by undermining one of the very foundations on which the emerging capitalist society rested. Capitalist exchanges depended in part on the existence of social trust, without which the marketplace would be unable to bridge the gaps between sectors of the population distanced by class. By refusing to live up to the bourgeois standards of an authentic existence, Gauners laid bare the possibility that appearances might not be a reliable indicator of true character.37 Concern about this situation provides the only reasonable explanation for the extensive discussion of crooks and confidence men in the criminological literature of the early nineteenth century; if such individuals could exist, and even thrive, then perhaps the institutions of capitalist society were flawed. The Gauners’ lack of compliance with the maxim of authenticity also created a practical problem, that is, the problem of semiotics for police experts who were trying to catch criminals. The lack of sure, outward signs in the Gauners’ appearance and behaviour made it impossible to discriminate with certainty between respectability and its imitators. Gauners slipped, for example, into the roles of upright craftsmen or honest hard-working salesmen in order to pursue their own corrupt vocation less obtrusively. According to Georg Jakob Schäffer, the key to differentiating easily between the peaceful tradesman and the Gaunerin-disguise within bourgeois commerce had yet to be discovered; the old indicators – residence and the appearance of a law-abiding life – were simply inadequate to allow police to distinguish one group from the other at first sight.38 In an effort to rectify this problem, Wennmohs proposed the development of a ‘semiotics of Gaunerdom’ (Semiotik des Gaunertums).39 This semiotics would employ whatever information was available so as to uncover, unmask, and expose the actual identity of a Gauner. Criminal experts were convinced that moving from bourgeois society into the criminal world provoked profound changes in a Gauner’s essential identity, even though residues of his earlier character might still be found in his appearance and behaviour. By penetrating the Gauner’s veneer of respectability and exposing the true, Gaunerish identity, criminologists might then be able to define a new set of reliable visual signs of Gaunerdom and avoid being misled by signs of respectability.

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In applying physiognomic theories to the task of policing Gauners, Wennmohs and like-minded criminologists sided with Lichtenberg, Kant, and Hegel in their critique of Lavater’s physiognomic theory. Lavater claimed that by directing his physiognomic gaze at a person’s fixed features, such as the nose and forehead discernible in a silhouette (Lavater’s preferred diagnostic tool), he could decipher an individual’s preordained character.40 Lavater’s critics, in contrast, looked at the malleable parts of a person’s face and stature for keys to his way of life, and they posited that changes in lifestyle would produce correspondingly changed features.41 It followed from this supposition that the criminal principles governing a Gauner’s life would be emblazoned in his face, body, and gestures.42 The ‘physiognomic gaze’ used by magistrates and detectives was not only diagnostic but also value-laden. It used physiognomic clues to differentiate ‘suspicious’ from ‘non-suspicious’ people, categories that were anything but neutral. The category of suspicious was bad, that of non-suspicious, good. The diagnosis of ‘suspicious’ caused a wide range of negative ascriptions – comprising the essence of Otherness – to be assigned to the suspicious person. The now-designated Other was thus subjected in his totality to negative stereotypes as soon as he was so classified! Thus we see that the physiognomic gaze was a ‘polarizing gaze and, that it facilitated the construction and preservation of a stereotypic, dualistic classification of mankind. Within this system, beauty and good moral character were intrinsically related. An evil character would manifest itself in ugly looks, as in Daniel Chodowiecki’s engravings.43 The ugly, brutal appearance of Gauners, as well as their observed tendency to age prematurely thus revealed their wicked character. Any departure from such appearances, however, could soften the assessments of criminologists.44 The German official Br. Lichtenberger, for example, used the physiognomic gaze to evaluate the Schinderhannes Gang on the occasion of meeting them during the French occupation of the Rhineland. He decided that Schinderhannes, the robber-chief, whom he knew to be the offspring of respectable parents, was a person of good basic character who had gone astray. This Gauner, the official wrote, promoted good principles within his gang and kept them away from committing the worst sorts of crimes: ‘Schinderhannes’s beautiful, harmoniously shaped body, his calm, natural face, his noble conduct towards me and my companions corroborated my feelings that Schinderhannes was not such a hardened villain that he could not be reformed at all.’45 But another

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gang member, nicknamed Schwarze Peter (Black Peter), was characterized in almost opposite terms as the embodiment of evil.46 The assumption that Gauners belonged to the negative half of a Manichean world structured official descriptions of every aspect of their world. Even their mode of social bonding was presented within this framework. Thus we read that bourgeois society was characterized by socially competent individuals whose relations were built on mutual trust, while the criminal underworld was peopled by ‘lone wolves’ who were incapable of social interaction. This portrait, of course, contradicts the analyses that emphasized the close cooperation and bonds among members of the underworld, but the discrepancy disappears when we consider the specific frame of reference of a given observer. Where the individual, rather than the group and its coherence, is the centre of an inquiry, the finding is one of lives completely dominated by rivalry and brutality: ‘the history of the brigands also confirmed that wicked people are incapable of true friendship. Their relations were limited to the common purpose of robbing, and everything that one did for his fellows was done for selfish reasons. Those who are closely connected one day draw the knife at each other the next.’47 It did not really matter whether the individual or the group was an observer’s chosen point of reference; both individual characteristics and group dynamics among Gauners seemed frightening. Both reference points produced summaries of dangers; neither led to questions about the basic premises that informed these investigations. The ‘fact’ of Gauners’ membership in a world diametrically opposed to the world of respectable citizens constituted the first unexamined premise. The Gauners’ activities were judged reprehensible, not because of their actual negative impact on legitimate society, but because of what those activities symbolized: Gauners achieved financial gains through fraud and theft thus demonstrating to everyone that the material goals of capitalist society could be achieved by following a path completely different from the normal, socially sanctioned one, and by using wholly illegitimate means. In this way, Gauners represented heretical belief translated into a modern society in which secular values had begun to replace eternal sacred ones. In the end, it is the resemblance between Gaunerdom and heresy, in the various forms that we have explored, which brought the weight of the German policing system down upon a group of otherwise petty swindlers and thieves. Both moral philosophical prescriptions and utilitarian goals required severe punishment for these deviants. Criminological dis-

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course consistently denied Gauners basic human status. Thus, they were truly the Other and intolerable.48

Toleration for Utilitarian Purposes: Prostitutes Catering to Male Demands The vigour with which criminologists demanded a radical solution to the social evil of the underworld of Gaunerdom contrasts sharply with their lenient attitude towards the related social evil of prostitution. This contrast did not result from any belief in a genuine difference between these two underworld cultures; Gauners represented male looseness, while prostitutes embodied the female equivalent. Preventive strategies against either group would have required similar attitudes and approaches, for both groups lived in an underworld hidden from view. Both also enticed vulnerable men into Gaunerdom; through their contacts with their male clients, prostitutes actually provided Gauners with a toehold in the world of respectable citizenry; moreover their demands for gifts and other special treatment enticed these men to begin spending excessively, thus luring them onto the paths that could lead them into criminal careers. ‘Today love and sexuality are very often the source of the most pernicious excesses and even the origin of many thefts, frauds, and similiar crimes, which might not be expected.’49 Under such conditions, the toleration of prostitutes in secluded social spaces within bourgeois society is nothing less than a miracle whose explanation must be sought in the gendered ideas of criminologists. They viewed both prostitutes and Gauners through a prism in which the categories of vice and respectability were structured according to the criteria of male dominance and needs. Prostitution was seen not so much from the perspective of female supply as from the one of male demand. When addressing the vice of prostitution, official memoranda, reports, and police publications tend to focus on the male’s irresistible sexual drive, paying particular attention to the greater intensity of this drive among members of the criminal class. As early as the 1780s, there are documents that treat prostitution within a framework constructed around the assumption of the existence of a universal male sexual drive. The correlation to this assumption, that society ought to provide a way to satisfy this male need through sanctioned prostitution, appears at the same time, and the introduction of differentiated applications, structured according to class-specific needs

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followed soon thereafter. An anonymous pamphleteer, writing on the topic in 1786, argued for brothels as a way to satisfy the malum necessarium, that is, the troublesome universal male drive for sexual release. A student of Joseph von Sonnenfels, the famed Austrian minister and political economist, argued against his teacher’s defence of the ban on brothels in Vienna. His pamphlet took the utilitarian argument for brothels into a class-specific realm, claiming that where members of the upper classes, such as Sonnenfels himself, had plenty of opportunities to appease their drives by exploiting good-looking servants, unmarried men from lower classes and from the military had to turn elsewhere.50 The class-specific argument, in several variations, can be found in most accounts by police experts. One variant actually paints a somewhat positive picture of male morality. It appears in a memorandum (Rescript) dated 30 November 1837, issued by the Prussian ministry of the interior upon rejecting the application of a private person who wanted to open a brothel for the upper classes in a provincial town. The memorandum argued that members of the upper classes had to live exemplary lives reflecting their cultured condition. Only men from the lower classes could be allowed to resort to prostitutes, not because their needs were greater but because they lacked the Bildung of the upper classes. In other words, tolerance for the vice of visiting prostitutes was to be determined along socioeconomic lines. Men from the upper classes were presumed to have received sufficient education and training to control their natural instincts.51 From the viewpoint of crime prevention, tolerance of prostitution had high costs. Young men in particular were morally endangered by the very existence of immoral women who could stir up lascivious fantasies in their impressionable minds. Moral reformers repeatedly pointed to the intolerable situation of urban youths. According to their reports, young men often gave in to the seductive influences of women of vice whom they met at public dances, and thus were entrapped in lives of vice. Merker, whom we mentioned previously, saw the corrupting influence of prostitutes on young males as the most immediate danger to the institution of private property. He argued that ‘once young men develop an inclination for intercourse with prostitutes, they cannot freely pull themselves away again.’ They will turn to embezzlement, forgery, and thievery to acquire the means to live up to the prostitutes’ expectations. Since imprisonment fails to deter such men from yielding to their inclinations, prostitutes must be banned from city streets.52

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Moral reformers and police experts alike were obsessed with protecting youths from pernicious social influences such as contact with prostitutes, indecent speech, or lascivious books and plays. At the same time, police experts were formulating policies based on the presumed universality of a male compulsion for sexual release. From their point of view, moral and public hygiene required the existence of prostitutes, strictly supervised and tightly controlled. Their views and policies were, however, continuously challenged, since they conflicted with the goals of selfstyled moral reformers, teachers, and other respectable citizens who were battling tenaciously against prostitution and other forms of vice. For these groups, preventive strategies that allowed some expression of sexuality outside marriage simply were not tolerable. Indeed, these advocates of respectability even stooped to frequenting notorious bars so that they could document the steady descent of working-class youngsters into a wicked lifestyle. Given the vigilance and commitment of moral reformers, police who took a more preventive, utilitarian approach to prostitution were susceptible to official criticism. An incident from 1851 elucidates this point. Less than a month after a particular reformer submitted an anonymous report to the Prussian ministry of the interior, the ministry addressed a memorandum to the head of the police department in Berlin, urging him to put an end to the vices that had been reported.53 Considering the anxiety that was being expressed about losing an entire generation of youths to Gaunerdom, it must be asked why such tolerance could be granted to prostitutes, whose vice actually helped that dreaded underworld reproduce itself. Certainly, contemporary religion and moral philosophy were not the source of this tolerance. Instead, the attitude seems to have referred back to the practices of the early modern absolutist police state, in which moral principles could be set aside in the service of the state’s utilitarian needs. Where sovereigns in early modern times sometimes tolerated religious diversity under a utilitarian rationale, nineteenth-century governments in the German states could tolerate female vice, even against the outspoken criticism of moral reformers. We see, therefore, that tolerance of deviant behaviour was based on the needs of males, the dominant social group. Tolerance of prostitutes was a utilitarian policy; the brothel, a useful institution for channelling male desire away from more immoral pursuits. Intolerance towards Gauners was similarly utilitarian, but, in this case, destruction of the group was deemed necessary to protect male economic interests, especially the institution of private property on which capitalism depended. In neither

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case was the decision based on any humanitarian consideration for the Other. This conclusion, however, can only be gleaned from a comparative historical approach. If we structure our inquiry along different lines, limiting it to a mere examination of the rhetorics that criminologists employed against Gauners, and if we extend our research a bit beyond the boundaries of this volume, we find a rather more familiar and disturbingly modern strategy: Gauners are degraded to the status of parasites and germs, officials dehumanized them and thus felt justified in calling for their destruction. And once that step was taken, only small additional ones are needed to reach that fatal merging of preventive and utilitarian principles used by the Nazis to justify their policies of extermination.

Notes 1 ‘Moreover, I believe that we have to destroy Carthage.’ Wennmohs quoted this familiar phrase from Cato the Elder with poetic licence. Cato’s phrase starts with the word ceterum instead of praeterea. This, however, does not change the meaning of the motto. 2 Johann Friedrich Karl Merker, Andeutungen, wie durch eine zweckmäßigere Benutzung der bestehenden Einrichtungen in ganz Deutschland bei geringerer Belästigung des Publikums eine höhere Stufe der Sicherheit gegen Raub, Diebstahl und ähnliche Verbrechen zu ereichen seyn würde (Erfurt: Maringsche Buchhandlung, 1983), 247ff and 313ff. 3 On Ortsaufsicht, see Johann Friedrich Karl Merker, Andeutungen, wie durch eine zweckmäßigere Benutzung der bestehenden Einrichtungen in ganz Deutschland bei geringerer Belästigung des Publikums eine höhere Stufe der Sicherheit gegen Raub, Diebstahl und ähnliche Verbrechen zu ereichen seyn würde (Erfurt: Maringsche Buchhandlung, 1818), 15–23. 4 Ibid., 15ff, and 23. This necessity was a matter much discussed in the circles of police and legal experts, as existing methods of investigation, of searching for wanted persons, and of proving a person’s guilt were inappropriate and inadequate to the task. 5 According to Schmidt (Einführung, 261ff), the first penal code that was systematically based on this preventive concept was promulgated in Bavaria in 1813. See also (247ff and 313ff) Schmidt for a discussion of the tenets of the preventive concept. The paradigm of prevention had serious consequences for the position of the criminal within the penal system and contained great potential for abuse. In this paradigm, criminals were not treated solely as errant individuals being asked to redress wrongs they had committed. Criminals were not, therefore, treated as responsible actors, possessed of

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free will, but were dehumanized, treated instrumentally, as nothing more than useful means through which social policy could reach desired ends. Immanuel Kant had recognized the potential for dehumanization in the prevention paradigm and had inveighed against the ‘serpentine-wanderings of Utilitarianism’ (Schlangenwindungen der Glückseligkeit) that subdue the categorical imperative under a utilitarian rationale. He argued further that, from an ethical point of view, the execution of a penal sentence is legitimized only by the need to restore the violated state of justice. This limited end requires equally limited punishments, appropriate for each crime. Any attempt to make punishments serve broader societal goals will be unethical. The Philosophy of Law. An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of Jurisprudence as the Science of Right, trans. by W. Hastie (Clifton: Kelley, 1887; revised 1974, 195ff; originally published in German, in 1798). Kant was joined in this critique of conventional legal practice by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who, however, emphasized that retribution played a greater role in penal theory than the retaliation discussed by Kant. More forcefully than Kant, Hegel stressed the potential for dehumanization of criminals embedded in the preventive rationale of punishment. Kant had asked, rhetorically, if it was not the legislator’s obligation to respect the fact that criminals, no matter what their behaviour, are still members of the human species (1974, 243). But Hegel went further, arguing that any utilitarian justification of punishment ‘is like raising one’s stick at a dog; it means treating a human being like a dog.’ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, transl. by H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 125; originally published in German in 1820). At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, the German penal systems were still a long way from the excesses predicted by Kant and Hegel. The treatment of the Gauners, however, can be seen as an example of the conclusions that could be drawn. And of course, the abhorrent scenarios of the Third Reich reveal the consequences of utilitarian prevention practised to excess. 6 In his 1806 book, the Hungarian police expert Franz von Csergheö observed that respectable citizens still adhered to the ethical principle that ‘morality is the basic condition of the greatest good. This truth is engraved in those people’s hearts, who are uncorrupted in their minds and hearts.’ Von den Ursachen pflichtwidriger Handlungen und den Mitteln dagegen (Pest: Eggenberger, 1806), 6. He saw this morality, however, as permanently challenged by an ongoing struggle between reason and instincts. Criminal deeds resulted then from the strengthening of ‘animal instincts’ that finally started to dominate reason. To keep those instincts dormant, the police, the penal law, and the pillars of

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bourgeois society, such as strong reason, honour, and the work ethic should work together. The idea of the fallibility of the human being was very well expressed in the introductory remarks to Friedrich Schiller’s novella Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre: Eine wahre Geschichte (The Criminal due to Lost Honour: A True Story), in Der Geisterseher und andere Erzählungen (Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1976, 29ff; originally published in 1786). He argued that the same tendencies and passions that have driven the most famous criminals, such as the ‘monster’ Borgia, can be found in a highly domesticated kind in almost every man. Merker, Andeutungen, 1. Johann Ulrich Schöll, Abriß des Jauner und Bettelwesens in Schwaben nach Akten und andern sichern Quellen. (Stuttgart: Erhard and Löflund, 1793), IIIff: ‘so lang die Zahl dieser Leute gegen die arbeitsame und erwerbende Classe verhältnismässig nicht zu groß ist, so lang sie ihr verderbliches Werk nur abgesondert und einzeln treiben, oder auch nur zuweilen sich damit abgeben; so sind sie immer noch ein gewöhnliches und [IV] wenig befremdendes Staatsübel. Aber wenn sie aus dem Betteln und Stehlen ein ordentliches Handwerk machen, wenn sie planmäessig dabei verfahren, und die feinsten Kunstgriffe gebrauchen; wenn sie in einem kleinen Bezirk ein stehendes Heer von vielen tausenden formiren, wenn sie zu einer Gesellschaft vereinigt sind, und mit zusammengesetzten Kräften zur Erreichung ihres Zweks arbeiten; wenn sie unter den täuschendsten Gestalten vor den Augen des Publikums sich versteken, und den sichern Bürger da berauben, wo er’s am wenigsten befürchtet; wenn sie nicht blos von ungefehr und aus Veranlassung eines widrigen Umstands auf einige Zeit sich zusammengerottet haben, nicht erst seit kurzem, sondern schon Jahrhunderte lang vorhanden sind, und durch noch so viele angewandte Mittel nicht haben unterdrückt und vertilgt werden können.’ Schöll was the author of Konstanzer Hanß: Johann Ulrich Schöll, Konstanzer Hanß: Eine schwäbische Jauners-Geschichte aus zuverläßigen Quellen geschöpft und pragmatisch bearbeitet (Stuttgart: Erhard and Löflund, 1789), one of the most famous biographical accounts of criminal life. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated CPB. See Franz Andreas Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner und über das zweckmäßigste, vielmehr einzige Mittel zur Vertilgung dieses Uebels (Güstrow: Ebert, 1823), 54ff; Karl Philipp Theodor Schwencken, Aktenmäßige Nachrichten von dem Gaunerund Vagabunden-Gesindel, sowie von einzelnen professionirten Dieben in den Ländern zwischen dem Rhein und der Elbe nebst genauer Beschreibung ihrer Person (Kassel: Hampe, 1822), 84ff. Merker, Andeutungen, 97; and Gustav Zimmermann, Die deutsche Polizei im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Hannover: Schlüter, 1845–1849), 3 vols., 658.

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11 Georg Jakob Schäffer, Sulz am Nekkar: Beschreibung derjenigen Jauner, Zigeuner, Straßen-Räuber, Mörder, Markt-, Kirchen-, Tag- und Nacht-Dieben, Falschen GeldMünzer, Beutelschneider, Wechsler, Spieler und andern herum vagirenden liederlichen Gesindels etc. (Tübingen: Schramm, 1813), 154; Schwencken, Aktenmäßige Nachrichten, 61; Joseph Ignatz Butschek, Abhandlung von der Polizey überhaupt und wie die eigentlichen Polizeygeschäffte von gerichtlichen, und anderen öffentlichen Verrichtungen unterschieden sind (Prague: Gerlische Buchhandlung, 1778), 70, note c; Friedrich Christian Benedict Avé-Lallemant, Das Deutsche Gaunerthum in seiner social-politischen, literarischen und linguistischen Ausbildung zu seinem heutigen Bestande (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1858–62), 4 vols., vol. 2, 32; and Chr. Rochlitz 1846, Das Wesen und Treiben der Gauner, Diebe und Betrüger Deutschlands nebst Angabe von Maaßregeln, sich gegen Raub, Diebstahl und Betrig zu schützen, und einem Wörterbuch der Diebessprache (Leipzig: Schmidt), 3. 12 Peter Strasser, ‘Tiere sehen dich an der Blick des Hasses, Manuskripte 30 (1990), 3–22, at 10ff. 13 Schwencken, Aktenmäßige Nachrichten, 47 and 61. 14 Carl Falkenberg, Versuch einer Darstellung der verschiedenen Classen von Räubern, Dieben und Diebeshehlern mit besonderer Hindeutung auf die vorzüglichsten Mittel sich ihrer zu bemächtigen, ihre Verbrechen zu entdecken und zu verhüten: Ein Handbuch für Polizeibeamte, Criminalisten und Gensd’armen (Berlin: Duncker und Humbolt, 1816), 6. 15 Some Gauners defied general expectations by being ‘reborn’ into bourgeois society as respectable citizens. One of the most striking examples of such a rebirth was the pardoning and peaceful evening of life of the notorious Swabian Gauner, Konstanzer Hans. This may have helped to protect them from extermination of the sort applied to the Jews and other victims of Nazi hatred. See Peter Becker, ‘Kriminelle Identitäten im 19. Jahrhundert: Neue Entwicklungen in der historischen Kriminalitätsforschung,’ Historische Anthropologie 2 (1994), 142–57, at 145ff. 16 Hegel, Elements, 166ff. 17 Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner, 29: ‘Classe von Menschen, welche, unwerth dieses Namens ... von aller Gemeinschaft mit anderen, die nicht ihres Gleichen sind, sich absondernd, in der Freiheit, wie in Gefängnissen und Strafanstalten, nur unter sich lebend, von allen Mitteln zur Veredelung und Besserung durch Lehre und Beispiel, welche der Staat und seine Anstalten darbieten, sich selbst ausschließt.’ 18 Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner, 106. 19 Carsten Küther provides a detailed account of the social organization of Gauners, even though he follows too closely the argumentation of the criminological authors. Räuber und Gauner in Deutschland: Das organisierte Bandenwe-

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sen im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987), 56ff. A list of readings on this subject can be found in Peter Becker, ‘Kriminelle Identitäten’; ‘Une Sémiotique de l’Escroquerie: Le Discours Policier sur l’Escroc au XIXe Siècle,’ Déviance et Société 18 (1994), 155–70; and Verderbnis und Entartung: Eine Geschichte der Kriminologie des 19. Jahrhunderts als Diskurs und Praxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2002). Johann Nikolaus Becker, Actenmäßige Geschichte der Räuberbanden an den beyden Ufern des Rheins (Köln: Keil), 58 and 66. Franz Rittler, Gaunerstreiche oder listige Ränke der Betrieger unserer Zeit – Eine Beantwortung der Frage: ‘Wovon leben so viele unbemittelte, und doch nicht arbeitende Menschen, besonders in den großen Städten?’ Um Redliche vor Schaden zu warnen: Bekannt gemacht (Graz: Kienreich, 1820), 10. The subject of Gauners’ language attracted ever-increasing attention throughout the nineteenth century. Avé-Lallemant devoted an entire volume (vol. 4, 1862) of his study of Gauners, Das Deutsche Gaunertum, to an analysis of their language. This interest persisted even into the beginning of the twentieth century: cf. Hans Gross, Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, 6th ed. (Munich: Schweitzer, 1913), Part I, Section VIII, 443ff. Zimmermann, Die deutsche Polizei, 417, 1139; cf. Becker, ‘Une Sémiotique,’ 160ff. Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner, 321. Friedrich Eberhardt, Polizeiliche Nachrichten von Gaunern, Dieben und Landstreichern nebst deren Personal-Beschreibungen: Ein Hülfsbuch für Polizei- und CriminalBeamte, Gensd’armen, Feldjäger und Gerichtsdiener (Coburg: Meusel, 1828), 14: ’beweist nur zu deutlich, daß solche so zusagen, einen eigenen Staat im Staate bilden.’ Ibid.; cf. Rittler, Gaunerstreiche, 37ff. Franz Rittler, Freymüthige Enthüllung der wahren Ursachen des täglich sich mehrenden Bettelunwesens, und wohlgemeinte Vorschläge, ihm mit sicherm Erfolg zu steuern: Ein Paar Worte zur Beherzigung für alle Vaterlandsfreunde überhaupt, insbesondere aber für die wohlthätigen Bewohner Wiens (Vienna: Mösle, 1818), 50. Schwencken, Aktenmäßige Nachrichten, 67: ‘die wilden Völker einer anderen Hemisphäre zu sittigen und ihnen die Fackel der Aufklärung anzuzünden.’ Ibid. The offspring of Gauner were not the only members of the German world who required moulding. Several measures introduced against vagrant families attempted to force them to settle down and have their children educated at public schools. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, these regulations would be aimed primarily at gypsy families.

228

Peter Becker

30 Merker, Andeutungen, 4. 31 Csergheö, Von den Ursachen, 27; Becker, ‘Kriminelle Identitätem,’ 152; cf. Martin J. Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11. 32 Michel Foucault, Überwachen und Strafen: Die Geburt des Gefängnisses (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 311. 33 Becker, Actenmäßige Geschichte, 14. 34 Avé-Lallemant, Das Deutsche Gaunertum, vol. 2, 8. 35 Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner, 32 and 337. 36 Avé-Lallemant, Die Deutsche Gaunertum, vol. 2, 33ff. A high-ranking official from Lübeck, Avé-Lallemant complained specifically about this change in the behavior of Gauners. 37 Hartmut Böhme, ‘Der sprechende Leib: Die Semiotiken des Körpers am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihre hermetische Tradition,’ in Dietmar Kamper and Christoph Wulf (eds.), Transfigurationen des Körpers: Spuren der Gewalt in der Geschichte (Berlin: Reimer, 1989), 144–81, at 146. 38 Schäffer, Sulz am Nekkar, III: ‘nicht ist das wichtigste Geheimniß, wie der friedliche Gewerbsmann von dem verkappten Gauner in dem bürgerlichen Verkehr ganz leicht zu unterscheiden sey, nocht nicht entziffert; noch hat die Ansäßigkeit und das rechtliche Leben kein so bestimmt in die Augen fallendes Merkmal, daß die Landstreicherei auf den ersten Blick davon unterschieden werden könnte.’ 39 Wennmohs, Ueber Gauner, 322. 40 Richard Gray, ‘Sign and Sein: The Physiognomikstreit and the Dispute over the Semiotic Constitution of Bourgeois Individuality,’ Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 66 (1992), 127–48, at 132ff. 41 Richard Gray, ‘The Transcendence of the Body in the Transparency of Its EnSignment: Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Physiognomical “Surface Heremeneutics” and the Ideological (Con-)Text of Bourgeois Modernism,’ Lessing Yearbook 23 (1992), 300–32, at 303ff. 42 Becker, ‘Une Semiotique,‘ 164ff. 43 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Der Fortgang der Tugend und des Lasters: Erklärungen zu Daniel Chodowieckis Monatskupfer zum Göttinger Taschenkalender 1778 (Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1986; originally published in 1778); Hans Richard Brittnacher, ‘Der böse Blick des Physiognomen: Lavaters Ästhetik der Deformation,’ in Michael Hagner (ed.), Der falsche Körper: Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der Monstrositäten (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1995), 127–46. 44 On the subject of premature aging among Gauners, see Schäffer, Sulz im Nekkar, IV. 45 Becker, Actenmäßige Geschichte, 451: ‘Der schöne, im vollkommensten Eben-

Toleration of ‘Social Evil’ in Bourgeois Society

46 47

48

49 50 51

52 53

54

229

maaß gebildete Körper des Schinderhannes, seine ruhige unbefangene Miene, sein edles Betragen gegen mich und meine Gefährten bestärkten mich in der Idee, daß Schinderhannes kein so sehr verstockter Bösewicht sey, daß er nicht noch gebessert werden könne.’ Ibid. Ibid., 8: ‘daß Lasterhafte keiner wahren Freundschaft fähig sind ... hat sich auch in der Geschichte der Räuber bestätigt gefunden. Ihre Verbindung untereinander erstreckte sich nur auf den gemeinsamen Zweck zu rauben, und was einer für den anderen tat, war nur um seiner selbst willen. Diejenigen, die heute auf das innigste verbunden waren, zogen morgen das Messer gegeneinander.’ Moral philosophy consigned only one other group, men who committed acts of bestiality, to the category of intolerables. Kant (Philosophy of Law, 244), e.g., wrote that the person who engages in bestiality ‘has made himself unworthy of human relations.’ Csergheö, Von den Ursachen, 20. Anonymous, ‘Bordelle sind in Wien nothwendig: Herr Hofrat von Sonnenfels mag dagegen auf seinem Katheder predigen, was er will,’ (1786), 5ff. See: Auszug aus dem Reskript des königl. Ministeriums des Innern und der Polizei, an den königl. Polizei-Dirigenten zu N.N. ... 30.11.1837, in Kamptzsche Annalen 21 (1837), 159–62. Ibid. Johann Friedrich Karl Merker, Die Hauptquellen der Verbrechen gegen die Eigenthums-Sicherheit in Berlin, mit Hindeutungen auf die Möglichkeit der Verminderung derselben (Berlin: Krause’sche Buchhandlung, 1839), 37; see also Rudolf Fröhlich, Die gefährlichen Klassen Wiens: Darstellung ihres Entstehens, ihrer Verbindungen, ihrer Taktik, ihrer Sitten und Gewohnheiten und ihrer Sprache – Mit belehrenden Winken über Gaunerkniffe und einem Wörterbuch der Gaunersprache (Viena: Wenedikt, 1851), 77. See the excerpt from a teacher’s anonymous report to the board of the Evangelische Verein für kirchliche Zustände, 21.1.1851, in Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Pr. Br. Rep. 30, Berlin C: Polizei Präsidium, Tit. 121, No. 22: ‘Akte betreffend das unsittliche Treiben halberwachsener Knaben und Mächen in öffentlichen Lokalen von Berlin,’ 1851, 16926.

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Index

1787 Edict of Toleration (France), 132; and Jews, 134–6, 142; general provisions of, 134–5; Malesherbes and, 138; Parlement of Metz and, 135–6; Parlement of Paris and, 136 Account of Denmark (Molesworth), 86 acculturation, 12, 161, 163 Acidalius, Valens: Paradoxe sur les femmes où l’on tache de prouver qu’elles ne sont pas du genre humain, 173 Adams, Geoffrey, 190n27 Adams, John, 92 Adorno, Theodor, 4 Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains: Le Sénégal, L’ (Geoffroy de Villeneuve), 160 Albergo di Virtù (Savoyard state), 35– 6, 49n31 Alcalá, University of: founded by Cardinal Ximenes, 100; Zamora professor at, 101 Alessandria, 44 alterity: exotic, 170–1; female, 170–1 African, 186; and slavery, 159; and Gauners, 178, 213, 220. See also Other; Otherness

Amadeus VIII (Savoyard state): Statutes of 1430 and Jews, 34, 47n20, 48n25 America: abolitionism in, 107; as site of millennium beginnings, 104; first Jewish community of, 112n20; Labadist colonies in, 102; Latin, 105; lunacy reforms in, 192, 202n18; Madison on political history of, 94; millenarianism and tolerance in, 10, 100, 107; North, 105, 192; Württemberg separatists emigrate to, 124; slavery in, 54, 156; South, 105 Amsterdam, 103 An 2440, L’ (Mercier): presents the face of the insurgent slave, 159 Aquinas, Saint Thomas: on the order of the commonwealth, 78 Aristotle: analysis of faction, 77–8; Hobbes against, 80, 83; on the polis, 77, 97n33; used by Marsiglio of Padua, 78; works: De motu animalium, 78; The Politics, 77 Art of Governing by Partys, The (Toland), 85–6

232

Index

Ashcraft, Richard, 8–9 Ashkenazim: of eastern France, 133– 4, 137 Asti, 44 Athens, 77 Aufklärung. See Enlightenment Augustine, 77 Austin, David, 104 Avé-Lallemant, 228n36; Das deutsche Gaunertum, 227n22 ‘Avenge O Lord Thy Slaughter’d Saints’ (Milton), 47n15 Baden, 125 Ball, Terence, 9 Bartolus of Sassoferrato, 78 Basnage de Beauval, Jacques, 111n11 Basting, Andreas, 196–7 Batouala: Véritable roman nègre (Maran), 161 Baumgarten, Siegmund Jacob: on freedom of conscience, 147; on toleration for reason of state, 147; on toleration of Jews, 147–8, 150, 151n9 Bavaria, 223n5 Bayonne: community of Sephardim, 132, 137 Becher, Johann Joachim, 151n3 Becker, Johann Nikolaus: on idleness of Gauners, 215; sketch of the Mosel Gang, 211 215 Becker, Peter, 14–15 Belley, Jean-Baptiste: considered the embodiment of the ‘Black Spartacus,’ 162; speech on abolition of slavery, 161–2, 167n22 Ben-Ezra, Juan Josafat, 104 Bengel, Johann Albrecht: and Bilfinger, 117; eschatological views,

128n20; favours regulating religious assemblies, 118; Philip Matthäus Hahn a disciple of, 119; Pietistenreskript reflects views of, 118; views on Moravians, 127n2 Berlin (city), 222; Jews admitted to, 147 Berlin, Isaiah: on the role of conceptual paradigms, 76; on Machiavelli, 80, 96n23 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 181 Berr, Cerf (of Strasbourg): observations to Malesherbes on Jews, 137 Berr, Berr Isaac (of Nancy): and Malesherbes, 137, 139; on the 1787 Edict of Toleration, 135 Bible, 62, 118, 121; polyglot, 100–1 Biella, 44 Bilfinger, Georg Bernhard, 128n19; author of the Pietistenreskript, 117– 19, 126; influenced by Bengel, 117; uses Moser’s legal opinions, 117 Birnbaum, Pierre, 131 Blacks: acculturation and, 163; and the Société des Amis des Noirs, 107–8, 159, 163; Condorcet and, 107; equality of, 12, 107; Grégoire and, 12, 106–7, 114n46, 161, 163, 166n17; in the Feast of Equality, 154; Métral on, 163; Négritude theory and, 163; portrayals of, 159; Raoul on, 187; rights of, 106; slavery and, 154, 161; toleration of, 12. See also Other; slavery body politic: Aristotle on, 77, 83; as artificial body, 83–4; as natural body, 83–4; beneficial effects of divisions in, 92; contrasted to a contractual body, 83–4; in fourteenthcentury political thought, 78–9;

Index Gauners as disease of, 224; Hobbes on, 80–1, 83; in Puritan political discourse, 81; inclusion of Jews in, 132; Locke and, 85; Machiavelli on, 79–80; Marsiglio of Padua on, 78–9; medical analogies of, 78–81, 83, 86; parts-whole relationship in, 78–9; republican discourse on, 79, 92; Roman, 79; Winthrop on, 82. See also faction; party Bödeker, Hans-Eric, 7 Boissel, François: Catéchisme du genre humain, 158 Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount (Henry St John), 9; A Dissertation upon Parties, 89; criticizes parties, 88–9, 98n55; idea of a country party, 89; defence of royal prerogative, 88–9 Bordeaux, 137; community of Sephardim, 132 Botero, Giovanni, 46n4 Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de: fantasy of the exotic woman, 170, 175 Boyer, Président, 162 Brailsford, H.N., 82 Brandenburg (German state): and Waldensians, 37, 41; and Jews, 145– 6; practice of reason of state in, 146; religious toleration in, 145. See also Friedrich Wilhelm; Jews, in German states Brazil, 102 Britain, 50n49; and Waldensians, 30, 38, 40–1, 50n50. See also body politic; Diggers; England; Levellers; party; Puritans; Rights; The State of the Parties; Tory party; Whig party; and the following individuals: Bolingbroke; Burke; Charles II; Chatham; Dury; Fielding; Halifax; Har-

233

rington; Hickeringill; Hobbes; Hume; James II; Johnson; Lilburne; Locke; Mary, Queen of England; Mill; Milton; Molesworth; Moyle; Newton; Overton; Paterson; Petty; Rainborough; Rockingham; Tindal; Toland; Walpole; Walwyn; Whiston; Wildman; Winstanley Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc de: on women; 13, 174–5; and problem of harmonizing desire with social order, 175 Burke, Edmund, 9, 98n58; defends principled opposition, 90–1; on party, 91–2, 98n57; Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, 90 Calvinism, 18, 133 Calvinists: French, 132–5; Gauners compared to, 208, 213; in Brandenburg, 145. See also Calvinism; 1787 Edict of Toleration; Edict of Nantes; Geneva; Huguenots; Peace of Westphalia; Protestants; Waldensians Campanella, 114n44 ‘Candid State of Parties, A’ (Madison), 93–4 Candide (Voltaire), 176, 190n20 Cardenas, 109 Carmagnola, 44 Carthage: as metaphor, 204–5 Carouge, 29 Casale, 44 Catéchisme du genre humain (Boissel), 158 Catholicism, 18; Protestant conversions to, 41, 133, 136; Savoyard, 28 Catholics, Roman, 107, 145 Cato the Elder, 204, 223n1

234

Index

Cavour, Treaty of. See Treaty of Cavour Césaire, Aimé: Discours sur le colonialisme, 161, 163 Ceva, Cardinal, 34 Charles II (King of England), 84 Charles Emanuel I (Duke of Savoy): Botero and, 46n4; restructures Turin, 34, 49n34 Charles Emanuel II (Duke of Savoy), 30 Chatham, Earl of (William Pitt), 90 Chaumette, Anaxagoras: on the destructiveness of slavery, 159–61, 165n16 Chiapas: Las Casas and, 101; millenarian ideas in, 10, 108–9 Chieri, 44 Chodowiecki, Daniel, 218 Cicero: on the res publica, 77, 97n33 Clarkson, Thomas, 161; and Grégoire, 159; correspondence with Mirabeau, 160; Le Cri des Africains contre les Européens, 159–60; on the consequences of slavery for African cultures, 160 Cléodamis et Lelex ou l’illustre esclave (anon), 190n23 Cohn, Norman: links millenarianism with intolerance, 100; Pursuit of the Millennium, 100; Warrant for Genocide, 100 Colie, Rosalie, 172 Colonie, La (Marivaux), 13, 171, 180– 4, 186, 191n28 Commerson, Philibert: fantasy of the exotic woman, 170, 175 Commonwealthmen: and the republican tradition, 85, 92 Compagnia di San Paolo (Savoyard state), 33

Concordat of 1727, 39 Condillac: Dictionnaire des synonymes, 156 Condorcet (Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet): fights for end of slavery in France, 107; on women, 173 Constitution of 1430 (Savoyard state). See Statutes of 1430 Costituzioni. See Regie Costituzioni of 1723 Confraternity of the Holy Spirit (Savoyard state), 34 Council of Trent, 28 Counter-Reformation: in the Savoyard state 27–8, 30, 33–4, 45, 49nn29,31; Compagnia di San Paolo, 33; Confraternity of the Holy Spirit, 34; Order of SS Maurizio e Lazzaro, 49n31; Ospizio dei Catecumeni, 34. See also Reformation, Catholic Cri des Africains contre les Européens, Le (Clarkson), 159–60 Cri des Colons... (anon), 166–7n21 Cromwell, Oliver: and Waldensians, 30, 36, 47n15 Csergheö, Franz von: on criminality, 224–5n6 Cuneo, 48n22 Dante, 78 De Gaulle, Charles, 96n8 De la littérature des nègres (Grégoire): contextualizes slavery within colonial society, 161, 166n20; pamphlet attack on, 166–7n21; surveys capacities for cultural and intellectual development among former slaves, 160–1, 166n20

Index ‘De la littérature haïtienne’ (Métral): first article on haitian literature, 162; seeks to demonstrate Grégoire’s anthropological thesis on slavery, 163, 168nn27–8,30 De motu animalium (Aristotle): invoked by Marsiglio of Padua, 78 ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,’ 141 Defoe, Daniel, 181 Deloffre, Frédéric: on La Colonie, 191n28 Denmark, 86. See also faction; Molesworth; party Des Peuples esclaves et des peuples libres (1791), 155 Dessaline, General, 159 Deutsche Gaunertum, Das (Avé-Lallemant), 227n22 deviancy: and gender, 197, 222; and marginalization, 6; and the asylum system, 192; as utilitarian policy, 219–20, 222; Csergheö on, 224– 5n6; deterrence of, 206, 223n4; German criminologists and, 206– 7; Hegel on, 224n5; intolerance towards, 201; Kant on, 224n5; masturbatory insanity and, 194, 198, 200; medicalization of, 200; of Gauners, 207; of the insane, 207; physiognomic theory and, 213, 218; prevention paradigm and, 206, 214, 223–4n5; psychiatry and, 192–3, 201; psychological theory of, 206–7, 224–5nn6–7; social, 192, 198, 200; tolerance of, 222; use of the ‘practical gaze’ with, 205. See also alterity; Gauners; masturbation; Other; Otherness; tolerance; toleration; women

235

Dialogo (Guicciardini), 79 Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson), 90 Dictionnaire de la langue française (Littré), 171 Dictionnaire des synonymes (Condillac), 156 Diderot: Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, 175 Diggers: on the body politic, 81 Discorsi (Machiavelli), 79 Discours sur la liberté des cultes (Grégoire), 106, 114n39 Discours sur le colonialisme (Césaire) 161, 163 discourse: about Jews, 144, 150; about women, 172, 176; anthropological, 22, 159–60; Enlightenment, 23, 26, 158, 162, 176, 189n15; of femininity, 13; of freedom, 184; French revolutionary, 13; of gender, 25, 176–7; of intolerance, 4–7, 9, 12, 14–16, 144; of masturbatory insanity, 197; political, 26, 74, 76, 92, 95; on progress, 162; Puritan, 82; racial, 209; republican, 77–8, 85, 92; on the slave, 159– 60; of tolerance, 4–7, 9, 11–12, 15– 16, 24, 26, 132, 139, 142, 170, 192; of toleration, 4, 12, 25, 144 Dissenters, 66 Dissertation upon Parties, A (Bolingbroke), 89 Dohm, Christian Wilhelm: argues from raison d’état for rights of Jews, 149–50; On the Civic Amelioration of the Jews, 144, 149–50; embraces Enlightenment view of perfectibility, 149; and Jewish emancipation, 144, 150; on the need of Jews for improvement, 149–50

236

Index

Douthwaite, Julia: Exotic Women, 173; on the function of the female figure in fictional exoticism, 173, 184 Drumont, 131 Du Noyer, Olympe: and Voltaire, 190– 1n27 Du Port, Adrien, 130 Du Rappel des Juifs (La Peyrère), 103 Dunn, John: ‘What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke,’ 54 Dupré de Saint-Maur: advice to Malesherbes on Jews, 137, 139 Dury, John, 103 Dusaulx, Jean-Joseph, 157 Dutch Republic: and Waldensians, 30, 38, 41. See also Netherlands, northern Eberbach Asylum: patient files, 194, 201n3, 202n18; patients, 193–200 Eberhardt, Friedrich, 213 Echterdingen parish, 119, 122. See also separatism; separatists; Württemberg Edict of 23 May 1694 (Savoyard state), 51n51; effects on Waldensian communities, 39; guided by ragion di stato, 45; and Pragelato Protestants, 40–1; and Waldensian liberties, 38, 41–2 Edict of 20 June 1730 (Savoyard state): defines legal status of Waldensian community, 42; guided by ragion di stato, 45; restricts Protestant rights in Pragelato, 40–1 Edict of Nantes (France): revocation, 36, 133 Edict of Toleration (Savoyard state). See Edict of 23 May 1694

Edict of Toleration (France). See 1787 Edict of Toleration El Salvador, 107–8 Elias, Norbert, 24 emancipation: attitudes of Jews towards, 137; ceremonies, 153–5; critiques of, 131; debates on, 132, 142; Directory debate on, 132, 142; Dohm and, 144, 150; Dreyfus affair and, 130; female, 180, 185; French decree of 1791, 130, 132, 142; Haitian, 163; of Jews, 11–12, 24, 130–2, 144, 150; and question of regeneration, 11, 131–2; of slaves, 153–5, 163; scenarios and semantics, 155. See also acculturation; Blacks; freedom; Jews; Jews, of France; Jews, in German states; rights; slavery; women Emanuel Filibert (Duke of Savoy): and Jews, 31; and the Ospizio dei Catecumeni, 34; and Waldensians, 29–30 Encyclopédie, 172 England: described in The Political Sow-Gelder, 87; development of modern party concept in, 84–5; Exclusion Crisis, 84–5; Glorious Revolution, 84–5; and Jews, 103, 151; political toleration in, 26; protects Waldensians, 8, 50n50; publications on masturbation, 193; Puritan, 103; Restoration Settlement of 1660, 84; toleration in, 53– 4, 84. See also Britain Enlightenment: and the absolutist state, 8; acculturation paradigm, 163; assumptions about human psychology, 205–6; concept of tolerance, 3, 12, 17, 19–20, 22–3, 171,

Index 173; conceptualization of gender, 5, 173–4, 176; critiques of, 4–7, 163; defines masturbation as illness, 193; despotism, 10; discourses, 23, 26, 158, 162, 176, 189n15; discourses of tolerance and intolerance, 6–7, 9, 12, 15; elevates toleration into a constitutive moral principle, 17; France, 108, 154; and freedom of religion and conscience, 171; German, 147–50; and individual freedom, 5; and intolerance, 4–6, 10, 14, 193; lunacy reforms a product of, 192, 200–1; millenarianism and, 105–6; narratives of exotic places, 170–5; natural law theory of, 147; notion of perfectibility, 149; perception of slavery, 154; politicization of, 149, 155; practice of toleration, 3, 22; practice of tolerance, 3–4, 19–20; and the problem of the Other, 17, 171; and the problem of tolerance, 3–7, 17–18; and race, 12; recasts toleration as a positive general principle, 3–4, 8; and reconstruction of Christianity, 144; and rights of Jews, 11, 105, 107, 144, 147, 149; in the Savoyard state, 28, 45; and sexual mores, 172, 174, 176; sexual Weltanschauung of, 187; tensions between individual conscience and authority in, 18; theme of virtue, 148, 150; theory-practice relations, 4, 6–7; universalist beliefs of, 155, 161; and women, 5, 12–13, 170–1, 173–6, 188, 188n7, 189n15; in Württemberg, 117, 126 Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain, An (Paterson), 87–8 Equiano, Olaudah, 160

237

Erfurt, 213 Essai sur la régénération physique, morale, et politique des Juifs (Grégoire), 105, 114n36 Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 56–7 Essay Concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion (Tindal), 65–6 Essay on the Roman Government (Moyle), 72n84 Essay on Toleration (Locke), 58 Europe: absolutist states of, 8; constitutional order of, 19; early modern 4, 18–19, 21–2, 208; medieval, 18; post-Reformation, 18–19; practice of toleration in, 18–20; Protestant, 36–7; Reformation, 18–20; religion a constitutive element of society in, 18–19, 21; Venus of, 175. See also Brandenburg; Britain; Dutch Republic; England; France; French Revolution; German states; Germany; millenarianism; Netherlands; Reformation, Catholic; Reformation, Protestant; Savoy; Savoyard state; Württemberg Exclusion Crisis of 1679–80 (England), 84–5 Exotic Women (Douthwaite), 173, 190n24 faction: in American debates on ratification of the Constitution, 92; Aristotle’s analysis of, 77–8; derivation from facere, 77; distinct from party, 75, 84, 87–8, 91, 94; effects on the body politic, 78–81, 83–4; equated with party, 85, 89, 92–4; evils of, 80, 82, 87, 92; in fourteenth-century theorists, 78–9; harmful to order,

238

Index

78–82; in later Christian writers, 77; medical imagery of, 79–81; and political liberty, 87, 93; possible benefits of, 92–3; in Puritan tracts, 81–2; in Renaissance theorists, 79–80; in republican discourse, 77–8, 92; in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century tracts, 84–5. See also Aquinas; Aristotle; Bartolus of Sassoferrato; Burke; Cicero; Commonwealthmen; Dante; Diggers; The Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brethren; Girolami; Guicciardini; Hamilton,; Hume; Jefferson; Johnson; Jones; Levellers; Locke; Machiavelli; Madison; Marsiglio of Padua; Molesworth; Moyle; Paterson; The Political Sow-Gelder; The State of the Parties Federalist party: Hamilton’s party, 94 Federalist 10 (Madison), 92; on relationship of liberty to faction, 93 Feuille villageoise, 155 Fielding, Henry, 87 Fiore, Joachim de, 108 Fisher, Samuel, 111n15 Fontenette, François de, 172 Fossano, 48n22 Foucault, Michel: critique of Enlightenment, 4; critique of psychiatry, 192, 194; ‘labor nexus,’ 214 France: ancien régime religious minorities, 132–3; Calvinism in, 133; ceremonies of slave emancipation, 153–5; church-state separation in, 106; honours Grégoire, 108; imperial, 150; Jews of, 11, 107, 130–1, 133–9; Lutheranism in, 133; millennial expectations for, 103, 107; slavery abolition in, 107; toleration in, 132; and Waldensians, 36;

women of 170, 175. See also 1787 Edict of Toleration; Bayonne; Bordeaux; Calvinists; Edict of Nantes; Enlightenment; French Revolution; Huguenots; Jews, of France; Lyon; Metz; Paris; Peace of Westphalia; Protestants; Société des Amis des Noirs; tolerance; toleration; and the following individuals: Belley; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre; Berr; Boissel; Bougainville; Buffon; Chaumette; Commerson; Condillac; Condorcet; Diderot; Drumont; Du Noyer; Du Port; Dupré de SaintMaur; Dusaulx; Fontenette; Geoffroy de Villeneuve; Grégoire; Jaladon; La Dixmarie; La Peyrère; Laclos; Lacretelle; La Lauze; Lavallée; Louis XIV; Louis XV; Malesherbes; Marivaux; Mercier; Méré; Mirabeau; Montesquieu; Napoleon; Postel; Raoul; Raynal; Roederer; Romilli; Rousseau; SaintEtienne; Staël; Talleyrand; Thiéry; Voltaire Francke, August Hermann, 117 Franklin, Benjamin, 92 Frankfurt-am-Main, 199: Jewish community in, 144–5 Frederick II (Duke of Württemberg). See Friedrich II freedom: of Blacks, 106, 187; of choice, 59; of conscience, 19, 65, 146–7; of desire, 172, 179; Enlightenment and, 4–5; Enlightenment discourses of, 12, 171, 184; and factiousness, 86–7; human, 22; individual, 4–5, 57; of Jews, 8, 42, 105, 131, 140–1; of the press, 63, 66; religious, 10, 12, 42, 59, 63, 106, 123–5,

Index 130,132–5, 145, 171; of slaves, 54; of thought, 54; tolerance and, 5; of trade, 125; of women, 186, 187. See also liberty; rights Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brother (anon [Fielding]), 87 French Revolution, 42; alters rhetoric of liberation, 187; Constituent Assembly, 130, 141, 158; critique of, 131–2; debate on abolition of slavery, 158; ‘Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen,’ 141; discourses of universalism and religious freedom, 132; Feast of Equality, 154–5; Feast of the Abolition of Slavery, 159; and the foreign fictional heroine, 184; and gender, 5; Grégoire and, 105–6, 114nn38– 9,46, 141, 160–1; and Haiti, 162; and ideal of tolerance, 141; and Jewish emancipation, 130–2; journals and pamphlets, 155; legacy for women, 5, 13, 187–8; National Assembly, 132, 154; perceptions of slavery, 154–5, 158, 165; and tolerance, 13; and toleration, 187; and Waldensians, 42 French West Indies, 155 Friederich, Johann Jakob: apocalyptic views of, 122–3; first pastor of Korntal, 128n18; and Philip Matthäus Hahn, 128n11 Friedrich II (Duke of Württemberg): charters Moravian settlement at Königsfeld, 125; and the Separatistengesetz, 124; and separatists, 122– 3; and toleration, 10, 126 Friedrich Wilhelm (Elector of Brandenburg): grants toleration to Jews, 145–6

239

Gauners: alleged missionary zeal of, 213–15; Becker on, 211, 215; and boundaries of toleration, 204–5, 207–8, 220; children of, 213–14, 227n29; compared to heretics, 208, 213, 216, 219; as a ‘counter-society,’ 210–11, 216, 219; criminological narratives on, 204, 207–8, 210–20; Eberhardt on, 213; Küttler on, 226– 7n19; and the ‘labor nexus,’ 215; Lichtenberger on, 218; Merker on, 213–14; Mosel Gang, 211; as the Other, 220; physiognomic theory and policing of, 212–13, 218; and the ‘practical gaze,’ 205, 212–13; and the prevention paradigm, 223– 4n5; problem of policing, 208, 218; problem of semiotics of, 212–13, 216–17; and prostitutes, 204, 220, 222; psychology of, 206–7, 214; and rhetoric of dehumanization, 208–9; Rittler on, 213–14; Schäffer on, 217, 228n38; Schinderhannes Gang, 218; Schöll on, 207–8, 225n9; seen as threat to bourgeois state and society, 205, 207–9, 216– 17, 219, 222; self-representation, 215; a self-sequestered group, 210– 13; social bonds of, 211, 219; use of secret language, 212, 227n22; utilitarian concepts applied to, 205–6, 222; Wennmohs on, 204–5, 208, 210–13, 215–17 Gellert, Christian: devises the character of the ‘noble Jew,’ 148 gender, 5–7, 12; and alterity, 170–1, 176; conceptualizations, 173; Enlightenment views of, 173, 176; and masturbatory insanity, 192, 195, 202nn12,18; and Napoleonic

240

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Code, 187; problem of masculinity, 192, 196–8, 202; and prostitution, 220–2; relations, 5, 25, 172; roles, 181, 186; and tolerance, 12, 24–5, 171, 220–2; and toleration, 171, 176–7. See also alterity; Other; Otherness; rights; tolerance; toleration; La Colonie; Mirza; Persian Letters; Supplement au voyage de Bougainville; women; Zaïre Geneva, 18; and Savoyard state, 29– 30; Waldensians exiled to, 37 Generalreskript über die Privatsammlungen der Pietisten. See Pietistenreskript Geoffroy de Villeneuve, René-Claude: L’Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africains: Le Sénégal, 160 German states: centralization policies, 146–7; conditions of religious toleration in, 145; discourses on Jews in, 144–50; Napoleonic reforms in, 150; penal reform in, 205, 208; resettlement of Jews in, 144–6, 150; rights of Jews, 150; toleration of prostitution in, 222. See also Baden; Bavaria; Berlin; Brandenburg; Eberbach Asylum; Echterdingen parish; Erfurt; Frankfurt-am-Main; Gauners; Halle; Herrnhut; Hesse; Jews, in German states; Königsfeld; Korntal; Kornwestheim parish; Lübeck; masturbatory insanity; Mecklenburg; Moravians; Murrhardt; Nassau; Peace of Westphalia; Pietism; Pietists; Reutlingen; separatism; separatists; Stuttgart; Wilhelmsdorf; Wittenberg; Württemberg Germany, 103, 204; asylums, 193, 203n23; Imperial, 145; Weimar

Republic, 209. See also German states; and the following individuals: Baumgarten; Becher; Becker; Bengel; Bilfinger; Chodowiecki; Dohm; Eberhardt; Francke; Friederich; Friedrich II; Friedrich Wilhelm; Gellert; Hahn; Hegel; Hohenheim; Kant; Kapff; Karl Alexander; Karl Eugen; Lessing; Lichtenberger; Ludwig Friedrich; Merker; Michaelis; Moser; Oetinger; Oppenheimer; Rapp; Rittler; Schäffer; Schiller; Schöll; Schubart; Spener; Wennmohs; Wilhelm, King; Zinzendorf Giannone, Pietro, 28 Girolami, Remigio de, 78 Glorious Revolution (England), 84–5 Goldberg, Ann, 14 Gradis, Moyse: observations to Malesherbes on Jews, 137 Grégoire, Abbé Henri: apology for Las Casas, 106; believes in the need for slave acculturation, 161; Birnbaum on, 131; on Blacks, 106–7, 114n46, 160–1, 163, 166n17; Clarkson and, 159; comparative treatment of human races, 160–1; and Condorcet, 107; councillor to Haitian Président Boyer, 162; critiqued, 131; De la littérature des nègres, 160–3, 166– 7nn20–1; Debrunner biography, 114n47; defends religious freedom, 106, 114n39; Discours sur la liberté des cultes, 106, 114n39; Enlightenment beliefs of, 105–8, 161; Essai sur la régénération physique, morale, et politique des Juifs, 105, 114n36; fights for abolition of slavery, 106, 160; fights for civil rights and toleration, 106,

Index 114n46; fights for legal equality of Blacks, 106; and the French Revolution, 105–6, 114nn37–9,46, 160–1; Histoire des sectes, 114n39; honoured in France, 108, 114n46; ideal of citizenship, 141; on Jews and Judaism, 105–6, 114n46, 131, 140–1; Lacunza’s influence on, 104, 113nn27–8; laureate of Metz Royal Academy competition, 140; Limonade and, 162, 167–8nn24–6; links emancipation with regeneration, 11, 105; Métral on, 163, 168n27; millenarianism of, 9–10, 103, 105– 7; Négritude theory and, 163; protects French scientific community, 106; and Protestants, 106, 114n46; rediscovers La Peyrère’s millenarian writings, 107; on religious freedom, 106, 114n39; representative of ‘benign egalitarian millenarianism,’ 9–10; Riquet on, 114n46; on slavery, 106–8, 160–1; and the Société des Amis des Noirs, 107, 160. See also Equiano; Ogé; Raymond Guicciardini: Dialogo, 79; on factions, 79–80; Ricordi, 79; view of the body politic, 81 Guillermoprieto, Alma, 108 Gunn, J.A.W., 73, 96n22 Gutwirth, Madelyn, 12–13 Hahn, Michael. See Hahn, ‘Michele’ Hahn, Johann Michael. See Hahn, ‘Michele’ Hahn, ‘Michele’: first mayor of Korntal, 128n18; manuscripts, 121, 128n11; separatist preacher of apocalypse, 121 Hahn, Philipp Matthäus: apocalyptic

241

views, 119–20; censured by Church Council, 120, 123; diaries, 127n6; disciple of Bengel, 119; and Friederich, 122–3; given parishes of Kornwestheim and Echterdingen, 119–20; nonconformist theologian, 119–21; supported by Duke Karl Eugen, 119–21, 126; technological projects, 119–20 Haiti: Kingdom of, 162–3; Grégoire and, 162; Limonade on, 162; Métral on literature of, 162–3, 168nn27–8, 168–9n30; Republic of, 159, 162. See also Saint-Domingue Haitian Revolution, 162. See also SaintDomingue Halifax, Marquis of: Political Thoughts and Reflections, 85; ‘the Trimmer,’ 85 Halle, 117, 147 Hamilton, Alexander: Federalist party of, 94; and Madison, 92–3 Harrington, James, 85 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: critique of conventional legal practice, 224n5; critique of physiognomic theory, 218 Henri Christophe, King (Kingdom of Haiti), 162; supports Haitian writers, 163 Herrnhut, 117, 119. See also Moravians; Zinzendorf Hesse, 145 Hickeringill, Edmund, 72n88 Histoire des deux Indes (Raynal): on the idea of the ‘Black Spartacus,’ 159, 162 Histoire des sectes (Grégoire), 114n39 Histoire d’un bon bramin (Voltaire), 174 History of the Future (Vieira), 102

242

Index

Hobbes, Thomas: De Cive, 81; Leviathan, 83; on the body politic, 80–1, 83 Hochzeit von Santo Domingo, Die (Kleist), 159 Hohenheim, Franziska von (Duchess of Württemberg), 121 Hourwitz, Zalkind, 141 Huet, Marie-Hélène, 176 Huguenots, 36–7, 40–1, 114n46, 132, 135. See also Calvinists Hume, David, 9, 92–3, 98n55; ‘Of Parties in General,’ 89; on parties from principle, 89–91; ‘The Parties of Great Britain,’ 89; typology of parties, 89–90 Iberia, 100; Marranos of, 24, 31; Sephardim and, 134 Indians (New World), 101 Istorie Fiorentine (Machiavelli), 79 Italy: Lacunza in, 104; Molinos in, 102, 110–11n10 Ivrea, 44, 48n22 Jaladon, 139–40 James II (King of England), 84 Jefferson, Thomas, 9; and Madison, 93; on party, 94–5 Jerusalem: in millennial thought, 102–3 Jessey, Henry, 103 Jews, 17; Ashkenazim, 133, 134, 137; Austin on, 104; converso defined, 110n10; Dury on, 103; expulsion from Spain, 100; Gellert on, 148; Marranos, 31; millenarian ideas about, 102–4, 134; New Christian, 100; Newport community of, 112n20; as the Other, 11; and the

problem of tolerance, 24; question of emancipation of, 11–12; question of regeneration of, 105; question of rights of, 106, 144; rights of, 11; Sephardim, 31, 132, 134, 137; Stiles on, 103–4; toleration of, 4, 8, 11, 24; Vieira on, 102. See also Jews, in German states; Jews, of France; Jews, Savoyard. Jews, in German states: Baumgarten on, 147–8; in Brandenburg, 145–6; in cameralist literature, 148; in discourse on virtue, 148; Dohm on, 149–50; Friedrich Wilhelm and, 145; German discourse about, 144, 146–50; Lessing on, 148; marginal populations of, 145–6; mercantilist policy and 145–6; question of conversion of, 146–8; question of rights of, 144, 149–50; question of toleration of, 11, 144, 146–8; reason of state and, 146, 150; resettlement of, 144–5, 150; Spener on, 146, 150, 151n6; state centralization effects on, 146–7; status of, 144–5; under Peace of Westphalia, 145 Jews, of France: 1787 Edict of Toleration and, 132, 135–6; ancien régime status of, 132–4; Ashkenazim, 133–4, 137; Berr Isaac Berr on, 135, 137, 139; Cerf Berr on, 137; Du Port on, 130; Dupré de Saint-Maur on, 137, 139; and emancipation, 130–2; French Revolution and, 11, 130–2; Gradis on, 137; Grégoire on, 11, 105–7, 114n46, 131, 140–1; Hourwitz on, 140–1; Kahn on, 130– 1; La Lauze on, 140–1; Lacretelle on, 136–7; Malesherbes’s opinions about, 138–9; Malesherbes’s study

Index of, 136–8; Metz Royal Academy essay competition on, 140–1; Parlement of Metz and, 135–6; Pfeffel on, 137–8; Prugnon on, 131–2; question of emancipation of, 130– 2, 136–9; and question of regeneration, 11, 105, 141; and rights of, 105–6, 130, 132, 134–42; Roederer on, 136–7; Rousseau on, 140; Sephardim, 132, 134, 137; Thiery on, 140–1; and toleration, 4, 8, 11, 107, 132, 139; Valioud on, 140; Voltaire on, 140 Jews, Savoyard: community charters (condotta), 31–2, 47n19; effects of administrative rationalization on, 35, 43–5;and ghettoization of, 34–6, 42–5, 50n40, 52n73; grouped in self-governing communities, 31–2; marginalized under absolutist regimes, 33; Maria Giovanna Battista of Savoy-Nemours and, 35; origins, 31–2, 52n70; protections for, 48n25; restrictions on, 32, 47n20, 49n32; ragion di stato and, 27, 32–3, 36, 45; segregated from Christians, 34, 49n34; Statutes of 1430 and, 34; and toleration for reasons of state, 27, 31–2, 39, 45, 49n29; of Turin, 34–6, 42, 44, 46n3, 49nn32,34, 50n40; under Amadeus VIII, 34, 47n20, 48n25; under Charles Emanuel I, 34, 49n34; under Emanuel Filibert, 31; under the Regie Costituzione of 1723 and 1729, 42–3; under Victor Amadeus II, 39, 43–5. See also Savoyard state; Turin Johnson, Samuel: definition of party, 90; Dictionary of the English Language, 90

243

Jones, A.H.M., 77 Journal de Lyon, 153, 155 Journal encyclopédique, 155 Kahn, Léon, 130–1 Kant, Immanuel, 218, 224n5 Kapff, Sixt Karl: Korntal pastor, 129n20; Zukunft des Herrn, 129n20. See also separatism; separatists; Württemberg Karigal, Haym Isaac: Stiles and, 104, 112n23 Karl Alexander (Duke of Württemberg), 116; Jud Süss Oppenheimer and, 126 Karl Eugen (Duke of Württemberg), 116–17; and Philipp Matthäus Hahn, 119–21, 126; and Oetinger, 119; tolerance of, 127 Kelly, George Armstrong, 76 Kenshur, Oscar, 171–2 Kleist, Heinrich von: Die Hochzeit von Santo Domingo, 159 Königsfeld: Moravians’ safe haven, 125–6 Korntal: Friederich and, 128n18; Johann Michael Hahn and, 128n18; Kapff and, 128–9n20; safe haven for Württemberg Pietists and separatists, 125–6 Kornwestheim parish, 119–20 Kourouma, Amadou, 163 Küther, Carsten, 226–7n19 La Dixmarie, Nicolas Bricaire de: fantasy of the exotic woman, 170, 175 La Peyrère, Isaac: Du Rappel des Juifs, 103; rediscovered by Grégoire, 107; tolerant millenarianism of, 103 Labadie, Jean, 102

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Index

Labadists, 102, 111n11; and religious toleration, 103 Laclos, Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de, 177 Lacretelle, Pierre-Louis de: advises Malesherbes on Jews, 136–7 Lacunza, Immanuel: influence on liberation theology, 108; influence on Seventh Day Adventists, 105, 113n34; in Italy, 104; La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Magestad, 104–5, 113nn27,30; representative of ‘benign egalitarian millenarianism,’ 9–10, 103–5, 113n31 Laqueur, Thomas, 201n6 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 100, 167n67; champion of toleration in the New World, 101; egalitarian millenarianism of, 106; supported by Grégoire, 106 Lauze, Abbé de la: recommends citizenship for Jews of France, 140 Lavallée, Joseph: Le Nègre comme il y a peu de Blancs, 158–9 Lavater: physiognomic theory, 218 Law of Freedom, The (Winstanley), 81. See also body politic Le Clerc, General, 160. See also SaintDomingue Leghorn, 32, 111n10 Lehmann, Hartmut, 10 Leibacher-Ouvrade, Lise, 175 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, devises the character of the ‘noble Jew,’ 148 Letter Concerning Toleration (Locke): argumentative strategy of, 57–9; a challenge to authority, 59–61; challenges authority of magistrates, 60, 65; claims liberty of conscience as a

natural right, 58; Dunn on, 54, 68n5; expresses anticlericalism, 60–1, 64; makes religious persecution a form of tyranny, 61; and the problem of toleration, 53–4; Waldron on, 55 Levellers, 9; Brailsford on, 82; on clerical authority, 62; compared with Locke, 61, 63–5; and individualism, 62–3; not a modern political party, 81–2; on liberty of discourse, 63; practical Christianity of, 61–4; and toleration, 61, 63. See also Lilburne; Overton; Rainborough; Walwyn; Wildman Leviathan (Hobbes), 83 Liberté sur le trône, et l’esclavage sous les pieds, La (1789 pamphlet), 155 liberty: of action, 59; of Blacks, 157, 163; of choice, 57; civil, 139; of conscience, 58, 66; of discourse, 63; discourse of tolerance and language of, 7; and factiousness, 78, 80, 86–7, 92–3; gender and language of, 7; individual, 26, 58; of Jews, 139; partisan divisions and, 92–3; political, 92, 158; of religion, 106; religious, 4, 63, 126; republican, 78–9. See also Bartolus of Sassoferrato; Dissenters; Franklin; freedom; Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brethren; Girolami; Grégoire; Levellers; Locke; Madison; Malesherbes; Marsiglio of Padua; rights; slavery; tolerance; toleration Lichtenberger, Br., 218–19 Lilburne, John, 66; focuses on practical Christianity, 62–3; on freedom of press as defence against tyranny, 63; views on faction, 81 Lilburne, Robert, 72n88

Index Limonade: on progress in Haiti, 162, 167–8nn24–6 Lindpaintner, Philipp, 193 Littré: Dictionnaire de la langue française, 171 Livorno, 111n10 Locke, John: argumentative strategies in defence of religious toleration, 8, 53, 59–60; challenges authority, 9, 58–61, 65; on Christianity, 56–7, 64; compared with Levellers, 63–5; compared with Tindal, 65–7; critiques of, 8–9, 53–6; Dunn on, 54, 68n5; expresses anticlerical views, 60–1, 64–5; on freedom, liberty, and reason, 59; on freedom of worship, 57–8; idea of authority, 9; on party, 9, 85; personal commitment to Christianity, 54, 67–8n5; on religious persecution and natural law, 58; on toleration, 58; on tyranny, 61; Waldron on, 55. See also Locke, works Locke, works: Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 56–7; Essay on Toleration, 58; Letter Concerning Toleration, 53–8, 60–1, 64, 67n4, 68n5; manuscript of 1681 on toleration, 58, 64, 71nn70,75; Reasonableness of Christianity, 64–5; Second Letter of Toleration, 58; Second Treatise of Government, 54–5, 57, 59, 61, 85; Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 56, 59; Third Letter Concerning Toleration, 58–9; Two Treatises of Government, 56, 61 Lopez, Gregorio: Vida y escritos del venerable varon Gregorio Lopez, 110n6; work with Mexican Indians, 101–2 Louis XIV (King of France): revoca-

245

tion of the Edict of Nantes, 36; and Victor Amadeus, 8, 34, 36–7, 40; anti-Waldensian dragonnade, 36–7; 40 Louis XV (King of France): regency for, 133 Ludwig Friedrich (Württemberg), 122 Lübeck, 228n36 Lüsebrink, Hans Jürgen, 12 Lutheranism, 18 Lutherans: of France, 133, 135 Lycophron, 97n33 Lyon: site of emancipation ceremony, 153–4 MacIntyre, Alasdaire: critique of Enlightenment, 4 Machiavelli: Berlin on, 96n23; Discorsi, 79; on divisions within republics, 79, 92; echoed by Toland, 86; Hobbes compared to, 80–1; invoked by Commonwealthmen, 85; Istorie Fiorentine, 79; Mansfield on, 96n22; medical imagery in analysis of factions, 79–80 Madison, James: ‘A Candid State of Parties,’ 93–4; Federalist 10, 92–3; and Hamilton, 92–3; ‘Parties’ (1792), 93; periodizes the political history of America, 93–4; reconstitutes the concept of party, 95; sees proliferation and toleration of faction as best defence of liberty, 93 Majorca, 32 Malesherbes, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de: author of 1787 Edict of Toleration, 134; and Berr Isaac Berr, 137, 139; and Cerf Berr, 137; and Dupré de Saint-Maur, 137, 139; and Gradis, 137; and Lacre-

246

Index

telle, 136–7; and Mulinen, 138–9; opinions on Jews, 138–9; Pfeffel’s advice to, 137–8; and question of Jews in France, 134, 136–7, 139; and Roederer, 136; Second mémoire sur le mariage des Protestans, 134; study of Jews, 136–8 Malino, Frances, 11 Mansfield, Harvey, Jr, 74, 96n22 Maran, René: Batouala: Véritable roman nègre, 161 Marcos, Sub-Commander, 108–9, 115n48 marginalization: and Enlightenment, 6; and masturbatory insanity; of Moravians, 125; of Pietists, 125-6; practised in the Savoyard state, 33, 36; practised in Württemberg, 125– 6; of Savoyard Jews, 33; of the socially deviant, 6, 25; and tolerance, 6, 125–6, 201; of Waldensians, 33; of women, 5 Maria Cristina (Duchess-Regent of Savoy), 30 Maria Giovanna Battista of SavoyNemours (Duchess of Savoy), 35 Marivaux (Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux): Deloffre on, 191n28; ‘exotic’ fiction of, 13, 171; explores the role of women, 13, 181; La Colonie, 13, 171, 180–4, 186, 191n28; ridicules women’s claims to equality, 183–4; sees visible female aspiration and sexual love as incompatible, 186–7 Marranos, 24, 31 Marsiglio of Padua: Hobbes compared to, 81; on the well-ordered body politic, 78–9 Mary, (Queen of England), 50n50

masturbation: as cause of illness, 193, 195–7, 200, 202n12; gender issues, 192, 195–7, 202n12; hysteria, 194– 5, 203nn18,21; intolerance towards, 194, 200; and repression of desire, 195–6; and self-control, 195–6; as a sign of mental illness, 198–200; and social deviancy, 198, 200–1; and socioeconomic class, 194–6, 203nn18,21; Tissot on, 193; treatment at Eberbach Asylum, 193, 195–200. See also deviancy; masturbatory insanity masturbatory insanity: concept of, 197–8, 200; illness of, 192, 195; proscribes a deviant gender type, 197–8. See also masturbation Mazarin, Cardinal, 30 Mecklenburg, 204–5 Memmi, Albert: Portrait du colonisé, 161 Memorial of the State of England (Toland), 86 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien: L’An 2440, 159 Mercure national, et révolutions de l’Europe, Journal démocratique, 155 Méré [Meray], Chevalier de: on women, 176–7 Merker, Johann Friedrich Karl: Erfurt police expert, 213; on Gauner proselytizing, 214; on prostitution, 221 Mesnard, Jean: on tolerance, 171 Métral, Antoine, ‘De la littérature haïtienne,’ 162–3, 168nn27–28, 30; and Grégoire’s thesis on Blacks, 163, 168n27 Metz Parlement: and question of rights for Jews, 135–6

Index Metz Royal Academy of Sciences: essay competitions on Jews, 105, 140–1. See also Grégoire; Lauze; Michaelis; Roederer; Rousseau; Thiery; Valioud; Voltaire Mexia, Ramos: Lacunza influence on, 113n34 Mexico, 101, 109 Michaelis, Johann-David, 140 Mill, John Stuart, 55–6 millenarianism: and Catholic liberation theology, 107; egalitarian, 9, 100, 106–9; Enlightenment form, 105; and intolerance, 100, 127; mystical, 102; and tolerance 9–10; tolerant Jewish-Christian, 102–4. See also Austin; Chiapas; Cohn; Dury; Fiore; Friederich, Johann Jakob; Grégoire; Hahn; Jessey; Kapff; La Peyrère; Labadie; Lacunza; Las Casas; Molinos; Quietism; Newton; Oetinger; Pietists; Rapp; separatists; Serrarius; Stiles; Van Schurman; Vieira; Whiston; Württemberg; Ximenes Milton, John, 36, 47n15 Mirabeau, 160 Mirza (Staël), 13, 171, 184–6 Molesworth, Robert: defence of faction, 86–7, 89, 92; links factions with freedom, 89; Account of Denmark, 86 Molinos, Miguel de: and Lopez, 102; possible Jewish origins of, 110– 1n10; tolerant millenarian views of, 102 Mondovì, 33, 44 Monferrato (duchy), 44 Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de

247

Montesquieu): Persian Letters, 171– 2, 183 Moravians, 124; settlement at Königsfeld, 125. See also Zinzendorf Morland, Samuel, 47n15 Moser, Johann Jakob: and Bilfinger, 117; imprisonment, 119; and the Pietistenreskript, 118 Moyle, Walter: anticlerical views, 72n84; defends factiousness, 86–7, 92 Mulinen: and Malesherbes, 138–9 Murrhardt, 119 Muslims, 17, 101 Napoleon, 107 Nassau, 193, 202n23. See also Eberbach Asylum Nègre comme il y a peu de Blancs, Le (Lavallée), 158–9, 165n15 Netherlands, northern, 26 New Christians (converted Jews): and polyglot Bible, 100 New Yorker, 108 Newton, Sir Isaac: millenarian views, 103 Nice: city, 32, 44, 46n3, 52n71; county, 46n2 North Africa, 31 Oetinger, Johann Christoph, 121; apocalyptic ideas of, 120; censured by Church Council, 120; and Duke Karl Eugen, 119; made prelate of Murrhardt, 119; and Zinzendorf, 118 ‘Of Parties in General’ (Hume), 89 Ogé, Raymond, 160 On the Civic Amelioration of the Jews (Baumgarten), 149–50

248

Index

onanism. See masturbation; masturbatory insanity Opinion d’une femme sur les femmes (Raoul), 13, 187–8 Oppenheimer, Jud Süss, 126 Optimates, 77 Oran (Spanish), 32 Orange party (northern Netherlands), 26 Order of SS Maurizio e Lazzaro (Savoyard state), 49n31 Ordine of 23 September 1633 (Savoyard state), 47n11 Ospizio dei Catecumeni (Turin), 34, 49n29 Other (the): the African, 186; the alien, 25, 178; Blacks as, 12; definition of, 3–4, 6, 10, 25; and deviancy, 21–2; and the Enlightenment, 3; exclusion of, 22–3; the exotic, 171; the female, 172–3, 176–8; Gauners as, 220, 223; gender and, 171; the Jew as, 11; the male, 14, 184; and marginalization, 6; and physiognomic theory, 218; problem of, 17, 22; prostitutes as, 223; Ricoeur on, 22; tolerance and, 3, 10, 12, 17, 21–2, 26; toleration of, 3, 6, 12, 21, 222–3. See also alterity; Blacks; La Colonie; deviancy; gender; Mirza; Otherness; Persian Letters; Supplément au voyage de Bougainville; tolerance; toleration; women; Zaïre Otherness: in exotic fiction, 178; of Gauners, 213, 218; and slavery, 159. See also alterity; Other Ottoman Empire, 31 Ouologuem, Yambo, 163 Overton, Richard, 66; on the individual and community, 62; views on faction, 81

Palestine: in millennial thought, 104, 122, 125 Paradoxe sur les femmes où l’on tache de prouver qu’elles ne sont pas du genre humain (Acidalius), 173 Paris Sanhedrin, 107 Parlement of Paris, 135 ‘Parties of Great Britain, The’ (Hume), 89 party, 9; in American republican discourse, 92–5; concept reconstituted, 95; defences of, 86–92; derivation from partire, 77; distinct from faction, 77, 84–5, 87, 93–4; evolution of the modern idea of, 83; and liberty, 92; from principle, 87, 90–1; problem of writing a history of, 73–7; in Puritan discourse, 82; synonymous with faction, 85, 89, 92–4; and tolerance, 73. See also Bolingbroke; Burke; faction; Federalist party; Franklin; Freeholder’s Alarm to His Brethren; Gunn; Halifax; Harrington; Hobbes; Hume; Jefferson; Johnson; Jones; Levellers; Locke; Machiavelli; Madison; Mansfield; Paterson; The Political Sow-Gelder; Rockingham; The State of the Parties; Toland; Tory party; Whig party Paterson, William: An Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain, 87–8 Paul III, Pope, 101 Peace of Utrecht, 40 Peace of Westphalia: establishes toleration of private worship, 145; protects Lutherans of eastern France, 133 Peron, Juan, 96n8 Persian Letters (Montesquieu): 171–2, 183

Index Petty, William, 151n3 Pfeffel, Théophile-Conrad: advice to Malesherbes, 137–8 Philip II (of Spain), 31 Piedmont, 28, 38, 46n2; Jews of, 32, 35, 44. See also Turin Pietism: Halle, 117; and Jews, 151n6; Spener and, 146; Württemberg, 116, 118, 120, 127n2. See also Pietists; separatism; separatists Pietistenreskript of 1743 (Württemberg), 116, 122; Bengel and, 118; Bilfinger and, 117–18, 126; limits of tolerance in, 119; Moser and, 118; regulates assemblies of Pietists, 116, 118, 120; replaced by Separatistengesetz, 123; sanctions religious pluralism, 118; stipulations, 118 Pietists: and Pietistenreskript of 1743, 116; apocryphal beliefs of, 127; assemblies of, 116, 118; Bengel and, 118; and Duke Karl Eugen, 119; and Jud Süss Oppenheimer, 126; at Königsfeld, 125–6; at Korntal, 125– 6, 128–9nn18,20; and Moravians, 118, 125; Moser on, 117; Württemberg, 116, 118–19, 125; Zinzendorf and, 118. See also Bengel; Bilfinger; Francke; Friederich, Johann Jakob; Hahn; Kapff; Oetinger; Pietistenreskript ; Pietism; Rapp; Separatistengesetz of 1803; separatism; separatists; Wilhelmsdorf; Württemberg; Zinzendorf Pitt, William (Earl of Chatham). See Chatham, Earl of Plato, 97n33 Political Sow-Gelder, The (anon), 87 Political Thoughts and Reflections (Halifax), 85 Politics, The (Aristotle), 77

249

Popkin, Richard, 9–10 Populares, 77 Portrait du colonisé (Memmi), 161 Portugal: millenarian expectations for, 102 Postel, Guillaume, 114n44 Poullain de la Barre, François 173 Pragelato: Protestants, 40–1 prostitution: and Gaunerdom, 220, 222; gender issues and tolerance of, 220–2; Merker on, 221; Sonnenfels on, 221; utilitarian attitudes towards, 221–2 Protestants: and Brandenburg, 37, 145; of France, 11, 106, 132–5, 145; of Pragelato, 40; Saluzzese, 29, 47n11; Savoyard, 27, 29–34, 40, 43, 45, 46n3, 47nn11,14, 49n31, 50n50, 51n59; of Valle di Luserna, 49n31; of Württemberg, 10, 124. See also 1787 Edict of Toleration; Calvinists, Edict of Nantes; Huguenots; Levellers; Lutherans, Moravians; Peace of Westphalia; Pietists; Puritans; separatism; separatists; Waldensians Prugnon, Louis Pierre Joseph, 131–2 Prussia, 146 Puritans: on the body politic, 81–3; resurrect idea of community created by covenant, 83. See also Diggers; Dissenters; Levellers; Lilburne; Overton; Rainborough; Walwyn; Wildman; Winstanley Pursuit of the Millennium (Cohn), 100 Quarant’ ore, 28 Quietism, 102 Quietists: toleration among, 102–3 ragion di stato. See reason of state

250

Index

Rainborough, Colonel, 63 raison d’état. See reason of state Rapp, Johann Georg: Church Council reactions to, 121, 123; decides to take his followers to America, 124; Karl Eugen on, 122; Privy Council attitudes towards, 123; separatist prophet, 121; violates Pietistenreskript rules on religious assembly, 121–2 Raoul, Fanny: Opinion d’une femme sur les femmes, 13, 187–8 Raymond, Julien: La véritable origine des troubles de Saint-Domingue, 160 Raynal, Guillaume Thomas François (Abbé Raynal): Histoire des Deux Indes, 159, 162 reason of state: and absolutism, 8; Baumgarten on, 147; in Brandenburg, 145–6; defined, 46n4; Dohm on, 149; and Enlightenment, 18; in German states, 150; guides Savoyard state policies and reforms, 8, 27–8, 31, 36–9, 45; and Jews, 24, 31, 36, 45, 145, 147–9; and religious toleration, 8, 27, 31, 39, 45, 147–8; and Waldensians, 31, 36, 38, 45 Reasonableness of Christianity (Locke), 64–5 Reformation, Catholic, 3. See also Counter-Reformation Reformation, Protestant: effects in Savoyard lands, 28–30; and freedom of the press, 67; and Jews, 24; and toleration, 3, 18–20 Regency party (northern Netherlands), 26 Regie Costituzioni of 1723 (Savoyard state): element of centralizing reform, 40; provisions guided by

ragion di stato, 45; provisions on Waldensians, 40–1; significance for Jewish community, 42–4 Regie Costituzioni of 1729 (Savoyard state): effects on Huguenot refugees, 41; effects on Waldensians, 41; establishes system of limited toleration, 41; provisions guided by ragion di stato, 45; requires ghettoization of Jews, 42, 44 Republic (Plato), 97n33 Restoration Settlement of 1660 (England), 84 Reutlingen, 117 Ricoeur, Paul, 22 Ricordi (Guicciardini), 79 rights: Baumgarten on, 147; civil, 11, 114n46, 133, 137–9, 141, 156–8; of Blacks, 106; of Calvinists, 133, 135; contingent on regeneration, 11, 149; Enlightenment discourse of, 158; to freedom of worship, 59; of French non-Catholics, 132, 134–5, 138; French Revolution and, 5, 130– 1; gender relations and, 6–7; German Enlightenment and, 149; individual, 55–9, 130; of Jews, 11, 39, 106, 130–42, 144, 146–7, 149–50; in Locke’s thought, 55–60; in Levellers’ tracts, 63; of Lutherans, 135; in Madison’s essays, 93; natural, 13, 57–9, 63, 667, 1557; of Protestants, 51n59; 106, 125, 133; Raoul on, 13, 187; of religious assembly, 116; of religious minorities, 140, 147–9; slavery and, 12, 155–7; of state over Church, 33; in Tindal’s works, 66–7; and tolerance/toleration, 7, 10–12, 19, 55, 58, 139, 148–9; of Waldensians, 30, 41, 51n59; of women, 5,

Index 13, 24–5, 181, 187; of the Württemberg Estates, 11. See also Bilfinger; Dohm; Du Port; emancipation; freedom; Grégoire; Jaladon; Lacretelle; liberty; Malesherbes; Moser; Pietistenreskript; Roederer; Separatistengesetz; tolerance; toleration; Waldensians; Waldron Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, The (Tindal), 66 Riquet, Michel, 114n46 Rittler, Franz: on Gauners’ children, 213–14; Habsburg monarchy police expert, 213 Rockingham, Marquis of, 98–9n58 Roederer, Pierre-Louis: and Malesherbes, 136–7; and Metz Royal Academy essay competition, 140 Rome, 18, 39, 111n10 Romilli, Edmé, 172 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 34, 140 Ruiz, Samuel (bishop of Chiapas), 108 Sabine, George: on Winstanley, 81 Saint-Domingue (French colony): rebellion in, 159–60, 162. See also slavery Saint-Etienne, Rabut, 141 Saluzzo (marquisate): Protestant enclave in Savoyard state, 29, 44, 47n11 Savile, George. See Halifax, Marquis of Savoy: absolutism in, 8; baroque art and architecture in, 28, 46n6; Catholic orthodoxy in, 27–8; form of tolerance in, 9, 11; Jews ghettoized in, 42. See also Savoy, House of; Savoyard state Savoy, House of, 46n2. See also Ama-

251

deus VIII; Charles Emanuel I; Charles Emanuel II; Emanuel Filibert; Maria Cristina; Maria Giovanna Battista; Savoy; Savoyard state; Victor Amadeus II Savoyard state: administrative reforms, 8–9, 28, 33, 35–6, 42–5, 49n36; becomes intolerant of diversity, 33–4; Counter-Reformation in, 27–8, 30, 33–4, 45, 47n14, 49nn29,31; Cromwell and, 30, 36, 47n15; defined, 46n2; fiscal policy, 48n26; and Geneva, 29–30, 47n14; ghettoization policies, 8, 32, 34–6, 44–5, 50n40, 52n73; and Huguenots, 40–1; Jewish communities of, 31, 35, 42–4, 48n22, 49n34, 52nn70–1; and Jews, 8, 11, 27, 31–3, 34–6, 42–5, 47nn19–21, 48n25, 49nn29,32,34, 50n40, 52nn68,70– 1,73; legal reforms, 40–5; marginalization policies, 33, 36; Morland and, 47n15; offensive against particularism, 33–4; and papacy, 39; population figures, 46n3, 48n22, 52n70; practises toleration for reason of state, 8, 27–8, 31, 39, 45; and Pragelato Protestants, 40; Protestant Reformation and, 28–9; and Saluzzese Protestants, 29, 47n11; state edicts: (Edict of 23 May 1694), 38–42, 45, 51n51; (Edict of 20 June 1730), 40–2, 45; (Ordine of 23 September 1633), 47n11; (Regie Costituzione of 1723 and 1729), 40–4, 51n59; (Statutes of 1430), 34, 47n20, 48n25; Treaty of Cavour, 29, 31; and Waldensians, 8, 29–31, 33– 4, 36–42, 45, 47n15, 50nn44,50, 51nn59,66. See also Amadeus VIII;

252

Index

Charles Emanuel I; Charles Emanuel II; Emanuel Filbert; Jews, Savoyard; Maria Cristina; Maria Giovanna Battista; Victor Amadeus II; Waldensians; and the following cities and territories: Alessandria; Asti; Biella; Carmagnola; Carouge; Casale; Chieri; Cuneo; Fossano; Ivrea; Mondovì; Monferrato; Nice; Piedmont; Saluzzo; Turin; Val Pellice; Valle d’Aosta; Valle di Luserna; Vercelli Schäffer, Georg Jakob: and semiotics of Gaunerdom, 217, 228n38 Schiller, Friedrich, 127; Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre: Eine wahre Geschichte, 225n7 Schöll, Johann Ulrich: account of Gauners, 207–8, 225n9 Schoolmen, 81 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 127 Second Letter Concerning Toleration, A (Locke), 58 Second mémoire sur le mariage des Protestans (Malesherbes), 134 Second Treatise of Government (Locke), 54; defence of Whiggish picture of party, 85; definition of tyranny, 61; on diversity of opinions and interests, 57; on God-given human freedoms, 59 Ségalen, Victor, 170 Senegal, 159–60, 166n18; in fiction, 184–6 separatism: in Württemberg, 120–5. See also separatists Separatistengesetz of 1803 (Württemberg), 123–4 separatists: apocalyptic beliefs among,

122, 127; defined, 117; emigrations, 122, 124–5; granted a safe haven, 125; marginalized, 126; Moser on, 117; Pietistenreskript and, 117–20; Separatistengesetz and, 123–4; settled at Wilhelmsdorf, 126; settled in Korntal, 125–6; and tolerance, 119, 126–7; Württemberg Church Council and, 120–1, 123–4. See Friederich, Johann Jakob; Hahn; Kapff; Moravians; Oetinger; Pietism; Pietists; Rapp; Württemberg; Zinzendorf Sephardim: of Bordeaux, 132; Emanuel Filbert and, 31; of France, 134, 137 Serrarius, Peter, 103 Seventh Day Adventists: and Lacunzan writings, 105, 113n34 Shapira, Rabbi Nathan, 103 Sissoko, Fily Dabo, 163 Skinner, Quentin, 76 slavery, 54: abolished in France, 154, 160; and acculturation, 12 161–2; ancien régime perceptions of, 154– 5; Boissel on, 158; Chaumette on, 159, 161; Clarkson on, 159–61; concept, 155–8; Condorcet against, 107; discourse on Blacks and, 163; in fictional treatments of women, 179, 185–6; in France, 107, 154; French emancipation ceremonies, 153–5, 161–2; in French revolutionary publications, 155; Geoffroy de Villeneuve on, 160; Grégoire on, 106–7, 160–1; Haitian discourse on, 162; question of abolition of, 12, 106–7, 158, 162; Raoul on, 187; and rights, 12, 156; Saint-Domingue rebellion and, 159–60; and the

Index Société des Amis des Noirs, 107; an unnatural condition, 155. See also Blacks; emancipation Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, 184 Société des Amis des Noirs, 107, 159– 60, 163. See also Blacks; Chaumette; Condorcet; Geoffroy de Villeneuve; Grégoire; slavery Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Locke), 56, 59 Sonnenfels, Joseph von, 221 Sophists, 97n33 Sorkin, David, 11 Spain: Lacunza’s influence in, 104–5; millenarian expectations and tolerance in, 100–1; Molinos and, 110n10 Spener, Philip Jacob, 150; on toleration of Jews, 146, 151n6 Spiritual Exercises (Ignatius of Loyola), 27 SS Maurizio e Lazzaro, order of, 49n31 St John, Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. See Bolingbroke Staatsraison. See reason of state Staël, Germaine de: ideas on women, 186–7; Mirza, 171, 184–6 State Anatomy of Great Britain, The (Toland), 86 State of the Parties, The (anon), 87 Statutes of 1430 (Savoyard state): regulations on Jews, 34, 47n20, 48n25 Stiles, Ezra: and Jews, 103–4; representative of ‘benign egalitarian millenarianism,’ 9–10 Stuttgart, 121, 125; court, 119 Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (Diderot), 175 Sweden, 41

253

Swiss cantons: and Waldensians, 29– 30, 36, 41 Symcox, Geoffrey, 8–11 Tahiti: in European narratives, 173, 175 Talleyrand, 114n38 Thiéry, 140–1 Thilenius, Dr, 199, 200. See also Eberbach Asylum Third Letter Concerning Toleration (Locke): on force in the commonwealth, 59; links toleration to natural liberty, 58 Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents (Burke), 90 Tindal, Matthew: An Essay Concerning the Power of the Magistrate and the Rights of Mankind in Matters of Religion, 65–6; on freedom of the press, 66–7; on the individual’s right to judge matters of religion, 65–6; Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, 66 Tissot, Samuel August André David, 193 Toland, John, 9, 92; The Art of Governing by Partys, 85–6; links factiousness and freedom, 86; Memorial of the State of England, 86; on parties from principle, 87; The State Anatomy of Great Britain, 86 tolerance: concept of, 4, 7, 12, 17, 20– 3; conceptions of, 170–3; a constitutive moral value, 18–19; critiques of, 5, 141; and deviancy, 21–2; discourses, 4–7, 9, 11–12, 15–16, 132, 139, 142, 170, 172–3, 192; of diversity, 3; and the Enlightenment, 3–7, 10–11, 17–20, 22–3, 26, 126, 171,

254

Index

187; Enlightenment despotism and, 10; as an ethical program, 22– 3; and the French Revolution, 187; and gender, 6–7, 12–13, 24–5; grounds for, 7, 12, 15, 19–20, 27, 223; historical roots of the problem of, 18; historiography of, 7, 20–5; and the ‘human,’ 22; and individual freedom, 4; and intolerance, 3, 6–7, 9–11, 15–17, 222; of Jews, 11, 24; and Jewish emancipation, 11, 132, 139, 142; and language of liberty and rights, 7, 10–12; liberation theology and theory of, 108; limits of, 7, 21, 119, 122, 126; linked with national identity, 10; linked with political supervision, 123; Locke’s idea of, 9; of the mad, 192; and marginalization, 125–6; and millenarianism, 9, 100, 108, 127; of Moravians, 125; as a normative category, 21–2; often accompanied by restrictions in other areas, 11–12; and the Other, 3, 10, 12, 17, 21–2, 26, 222–3; of Pietists, 127; of political partisanship, 10, 73, 87; as a positive general principle, 3; practice of, 4, 11, 19–20, 22; preconditions for, 124; of prostitution, 221–2; Protestant Reformation and, 18– 19; and race, 12; reason of state and, 31; religious, 20, 116, 122, 124, 126; required for polyglot Bible project, 100; and rights, 7, 139–42, 171; in the Savoyard state, 27, 31, 34, 38, 45; of separatists, 119, 127; and social deviancy, 19, 192, 200–1; and sovereignty, 19–20; ; stateimposed, 5; as utilitarian policy, 222–3; and women, 13, 170–4, 187;

in Württemberg, 10, 122–3, 126–7. See also toleration toleration, 19–20; boundaries of, 4, 204; concept of, 18, 28, 45, 73; discourse of, 4; distinguished from tolerance, 45; and diversity, 5, 56–7; edicts, 10, 36, 38–42, 45, 51n51, 116–20, 122–4, 126, 127n1; of the effeminate male, 14; and Enlightenment, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 18, 28, 45, 106; French Revolution and, 13; Gauners, 14, 204–5, 208; German boundaries of, 204, 206–7, 229n48; of Indians, 101–2; of Jews, 4, 8, 11, 24, 31–2, 45, 107; and Jewish-Christian millenarianism, 103–4; Levellers and, 61, 63, 65; limits, 7, 15; of marginal groups, 25; millenarianism and, 101–3, 106–7; as a natural right, 65; Pietists and, 146; of political partisanship, 9, 25–6, 73–4, 95; as a positive concept, 4, 6, 22, 61; pragmatic, 3, 23, 33, 45, 56; problem of, 53; of prostitutes, 220; and race, 12, 106; and reason of state 8, 18, 27–8, 31, 36, 38, 45, 145–8; religious, 8, 19–20, 23–4, 30, 38–9, 53, 63, 66, 146, 172; as a right, 57–8; in the Savoyard state, 8, 28, 38–9, 45; for utilitarian purposes, 222; and virtue, 148; of Waldensians, 8, 31, 41, 45; and women, 12–14, 170–2, 175–6, 180, 186–8. See also alterity; Blacks; Calvinism; Calvinists; deviancy; emancipation; freedom; gender; Jews; Jews, of France; Jews, in German states; Jews, Savoyard; liberty; Lutherans; marginalization; Muslims; Other; Otherness; Protestantism; Quietism; reason of state;

Index rights; Savoyard state; separatism; separatists; slavery; The State of the Parties; tolerance; Waldensians; women; and the following individuals: Austin; Baumgarten; Bilfinger; Buffon; Dury; Fontenette; Friedrich II; Jessey; Karl Eugen; La Peyrère; Labadie; Las Casas; Locke; Lopez; Malesherbes; Mesnard; Molinos; Ricoeur; Romilli; Serrarius; Spener; Stiles; Tindal; Toland; Van Schurman; Victor Amadeus II; William III; Ximenes Tory party, 26, 84, 85, 89; a principled party, 87 Toussaint-Louverture, General, 159 Treaty of Cavour (1561): abrogated, 37; and Waldensians, 29–31, 38 Treaties of Westphalia. See Peace of Westphalia ‘Trimmer, the.’ See Halifax, Marquis of Tübingen, University of, 117 Turin, 29, 39; administrative reforms and urban development in, 35–6, 49nn34,36, 50nn38,40; Albergo di Virtù, 35–6; Consolato, 35; Jewish population of, 46n3; and Jews, 8, 34–6, 42, 44, 49nn32,34, 50n40; Ospizio dei Catecumeni, 34, 47n14, 49n29; Ospizio di Carità, 35; Senate, 49n32, 51n51; Sovraintendente di Politica, 35. See also Jews, Savoyard; Savoyard state Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 56; defines tyranny, 61 Ueber Gauner und über das Zweckmässigste, vielmehr einzige Mittel zur Vertil-

255

gung dieses Uebels (Wennmohs), 204, 226n17 United Netherlands, 8 United States of America, 104; and abolitionism, 107; republican discourse in, 92 Utrecht, Peace of. See Peace of Utrecht Val Pellice, 29 Valioud, 140 Valle d’Aosta, 46n2 Valle di Luserna, 49n31 Van Schurman, Anna Maria, 102 Vanloo, Carle, 177 Vaucher, Alfred-Félix, 113n34, 114n44. See also Seventh Day Adventists Venido del Mesias en Gloria y Magestad, La (Lacunza), 104–5, 113n27, 113n30 Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre: Eine wahre Geschichte, Der (Schiller), 225n7 Vercelli, 37 Véritable origine des troubles de SaintDomingue, La (Raymond), 160 Victor Amadeus II (of Savoy), 35; centralizing reforms of, 8, 33, 45; establishes system of limited toleration for religious minorities, 38, 41, 45; expels Huguenots, 40–1; joins antiFrench alliance, 38; and Louis XIV of France, 8, 36–7, 40; and Monferrato Jews, 44; and papacy, 39, 41, 43; policies towards Jews, 39, 43; and Pragelato Protestants, 40; and reason of state, 8, 36, 38–9, 45; reform program, 33, 40–1, 45; and Waldensians, 36–42; and William III, 38. See also Edict of 1694; Edict

256

Index

of 20 June 1730; Jews, Savoyard; Regie Costituzioni of 1723 and 1729; Savoyard state; Waldensians Vida y escritos del venerable varon Gregorio Lopez, 110n6 Vieira, Antonio de, 108; History of the Future, 102; source for Lacunza, 114n44 Vienna, 122 Villeneuve, René-Claude Geoffroy de. See Geoffroy de Villeneuve Voltaire: on Baumgarten, 147; Candide, 176; and Du Noyer, 190–1n27; Histoire d’un bon bramin, 174; on Jews, 140; on religious bigotry, 178; on women, 174–6; Zaïre, 171, 178– 80 Waldensians: affiliated with Calvinist Geneva, 29; and Edict of 1694, 38– 42, 50n48; and Edict of 1730, 41–2; ghettoized, 32; legally tolerated religious minority, 30, 45; protected by foreign powers, 30–1, 40–1, 50nn49–50; Protestant minority in Savoyard state, 29; residence restrictions on, 30; Savoyard massacres of, 27, 30, 36–7, 50n44; and Treaty of Cavour, 29–31; under Regie Costituzioni of 1723 and 1729, 40–2. See also Pragelato; Saluzzo; Savoyard state; Val Pellice; Valle di Luserna; Victor Amadeus II Waldron, Jeremy: on Locke, 55 Walpole, Robert, 88 Walwyn, William: on practical Christianity, 62–3 War of the Austrian Succession, 38 Warrant for Genocide (Cohn), 100 Weimar Republic, 209

Wennmohs, Franz Andreas: critique of Lavater, 218; on Gauners, 204–5, 208, 210–12, 215–16, 226n17; semiotic of Gaunerdom, 212–13, 217; Ueber Gauner und über das Zweckmässigste, vielmehr einzige Mittel zur Vertilgung dieses Uebels, 204, 226n17 Westphalia, Treaties of. See Peace of Westphalia ‘What Is Living and What Is Dead in the Political Theory of John Locke?’ (Dunn), 54 Whig party, 26; a principled party, 87; contractualist view of monarchy, 85; New Whigs, 88; Old Whigs, 88; Real, 85, 89 (see also Commonwealthmen); Rockingham Whigs, 90; views on freedom and factions, 89; ‘Whig,’ 84; Whiggamores and, 84 Whiston, William, 103 Wildman, Major, 62 Wilhelm (King of Württemberg): charters Wilhelmsdorf settlement, 126; Korntal settlement, 125–6; and separatists, 125 Wilhelmsdorf: separatist safe haven, 126, 128n20 William III (of Orange), 38 Williams, Roger, 82 Windt, Dr, 193, 200. See also Eberbach Asylum Winstanley, Gerrard: The Law of Freedom, 81; views on faction, 81 Winthrop, John, 82 Wittenberg, 18 women: alterity of, 24, 170–1; Buffon on, 13, 174–5; Condorcet on, 173; in discourse of virtue, 148; in Enlightenment discourse, 24, 172–

Index 6; as the exotic Other, 171–3, 175, 177–8, 186; in the fantasy of Tahiti, 173, 175; in fictional works, 13, 171–3, 177–87; freedom of, 186; French Revolution legacy and, 13, 187–8; and gender conceptualizations, 12–13, 170, 173–4, 176; gender relations, 6, 25; Huet on, 176; in La Colonie, 180–4, 186; in literature on monstrous conceptions, 176; and male desire, 180, 185; marginalized, 5; masturbation by, 14, 195; in Mirza, 184–7; non-fictive French accounts of, 174–6; as the Other, 172–3, 176–7; in Persian Letters, 171–2; philosophes on, 171; Poullain de la Barre on, 173; prostitution, 14, 221; question of parity/ equality of, 12–13, 24, 175, 182; rights of, 5, 13, 24–5, 181, 187; status of, 172, 187–8, 188n7; in Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, 175; and the theme of desire, 13–14, 175–6, 180, 185, 186–7; tolerance of, 13, 170–2; and toleration, 5, 12, 14, 170–3, 188; in Zaïre, 178–80. See also Acidalius; Douthwaite; emancipation; Laclos; Méré; Raoul; Vanloo Württemberg (duchy): accepts exiled Waldensians, 37; Bengel and, 117– 18; Bilfinger and, 117–18, 126; Church Council, 120–1, 123–4; Duke Friedrich II of, 10, 122–3, 126; Duke Karl Alexander of, 116; Duke Karl Eugen of, 10, 116–17, 119, 122, 126–7; emigrations from, 122, 124– 5; enlightened despotism in, 116, 124, 126; Estates of, 117, 119, 126; Franziska von Hohenheim, 121;

257 and Jud Süss Oppenheimer, 126; King Wilhelm of, 125–6; Königsfeld settlement, 125; Korntal settlement, 125–6; Ludwig Friedrich of, 122; marginalization policies, 125–6; and Moravians, 124–5, 127n2; Pietistenreskript, 116, 118, 120; Pietists, 116, 118–19, 125, 127n2, 128n11; policies on separatists, 120–2, 124; Privy Council (Geheime Rat), 123; Protestants, 10; and Rapp, 121–4, 128n9; religious pluralism in, 118; religious tolerance in, 10, 122, 126– 7; rights of religious assembly in, 116, 118; and Schiller, 127; separatist emigrations from, 125; Separatistengesetz, 123–4; Stuttgart court, 119; Wilhelmsdorf settlement, 126; and Zinzendorf, 117–18, 124. See also Friedrich, Johann Jakob; Hahn, Michele; Hahn, Philipp Matthäus; Oetinger; Pietists; Pietism; separatism; separatists

Ximenes, Cardinal (primate of Spain): and polyglot Bible project, 100–1; and University of Alcalà, 100; millenarian expectations of, 100; tolerant views of, 101 Yale University, 104 Zaïre (Voltaire), 13, 171, 178–80 Zamora, Alfonso de, 101 Zinzendorf, Count Nikolaus Ludwig: and Württemberg, 117–8, 124. See also Moravians Zukunft des Herrn (Kapff), 129n20